When a DOT-funded package comes back with 5 to 15 subcontractor bids in five different formats, leveling them is the bottleneck. Bid Reasoner reads each bid PDF, normalizes every pay item to your scope, and scores every bidder — using peer-median normalization that works in any US state, with no government data required.
A state-DOT heavy-civil project breaks into packages — earthwork, structures, drainage, paving, guiderail — and each one comes back with a stack of subcontractor bids in whatever format the sub used. One quotes by DOT pay-item number, the next bundles three items into a lump sum, a third leaves half your scope unpriced. Leveling them by hand in a spreadsheet eats a day per package.
And the award has to hold up. On DOT-funded work, an unbalanced unit price or a front-loaded mobilization isn't just a margin risk — it's the kind of thing that gets questioned later. You need every bidder normalized to the same scope, the outliers flagged before you award, and the reasoning on the record in case anyone asks why you picked who you picked.
Three steps, the same in every state — the baseline source is the only thing that changes.
Bid Reasoner reads each subcontractor bid PDF — any format — extracts every line item, and maps it to your DOT scope of work. Bundled, renamed, and out-of-order items get reconciled to the same pay items.
In any US state it normalizes each bidder against the peer median of your own bids — no government data required. Four deterministic rules flag unbalanced unit prices, peer outliers, total-bid outliers, and front-loaded mobilization.
Every bidder is scored on six dimensions under any of 7 decision modes. Bid Reasoner recommends a winner with confidence and page-cited evidence, then generates the award memo and audit trail as real .docx.
No state is locked out, and you never have to source government data to start.
In any US state, there's no per-state government dataset required. Bid Reasoner normalizes each bidder against the peer median of your own received bids for that package. The practical result: you can level DOT sub bids in any U.S. state on day one, and the answer to "is this unit price out of line?" comes from the bidders sitting in front of you.
Select states — currently New York and New Jersey — also ship with built-in government DOT baselines, but the peer-median engine stands on its own everywhere.
For the underlying engine across all trades, see bid leveling software, and for the wider heavy-civil workflow, heavy-civil estimating software.
Price, scope, schedule, compliance, performance, and risk — applied to every bidder, every state.
Lowest Responsible Bid, Best Value, Lowest Risk, Schedule Priority, Scope Completeness, Budget-Constrained, and Custom Weighting.
Unbalanced unit prices (≤ $1.00), peer outliers (>2x or <0.5x median), total-bid outliers (>20%), front-loaded mobilization (>10%).
Every US state via peer-median normalization — no per-state government data required.
On DOT packages, the gaps matter as much as the prices. Bid Reasoner runs scope-coverage gap analysis on every bidder: it surfaces the items in your scope of work that a bidder did not quote, and the items a bidder priced that weren't in your scope at all. That's how you catch the "low" bid that's only low because it left out the drainage structures — before it becomes a mid-project change order.
Pair that with the four risk flags, and an apparent low bidder with a $1.00 unit price on a high-quantity item or an 11% mobilization line gets surfaced, not buried. See the deeper treatment on scope gap analysis.
| Excel / manual | Generic bid software | Bid Reasoner | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reads any sub bid PDF format | Retype by hand | Templated intake | Any format, extracted |
| Normalizes to DOT pay items / your SOW | Manual mapping | Partial | Per line item |
| State coverage | You build it | Varies | Any US state via peer-median normalization |
| Outlier & unbalanced-price flags | If you write the formula | Limited | 4 deterministic rules |
| Scope-gap analysis | Eyeball it | Rare | Both directions |
| Defensible award memo + audit trail | Written from memory | No | 7 .docx, page-cited |
For the bids you receive. Bid Reasoner is for the heavy-civil GC who collects 5 to 15 subcontractor bids per package on a DOT-funded project and has to level, score, and award them. It is not for preparing or submitting your own bid up to the state DOT, and it is not takeoff or quantity-estimating software.
Every US state via peer-median normalization, no government data required. Bid Reasoner reads each subcontractor bid PDF, extracts and normalizes every line item, maps it to your scope of work, and normalizes each bidder against the peer median of the bids you received — so leveling works the same way nationwide. New York and New Jersey also have built-in state-DOT baselines.
No. Bid Reasoner does not generate quantities or do takeoff. It is the sub-bid leveling and award layer: it analyzes the subcontractor bids you receive, normalizes them, scores each bidder, and documents the award. It complements estimating tools like HCSS HeavyBid and B2W.
Four deterministic risk rules run on every bid — not an opaque AI score. It flags unbalanced unit prices at or below $1.00, peer outliers more than 2x or less than 0.5x the peer median, total-bid outliers more than 20% off the median, and front-loaded mobilization above 10% of the total. Each flag is shown with the line item that triggered it.
Yes. Bid Reasoner recommends a winner with a confidence level and reasoning evidence, and every finding is cited to a page-level quote from the source bid PDF. If you override the recommendation, a category and reason are required and logged. It then auto-generates seven Word documents, including a Reasoned Award Memo and Evidence Report, so the decision holds up under review.
It is built for the typical heavy-civil package of 5 to 15 subcontractor bids, and handles fewer or more. Every bidder is normalized to the same scope and scored on the same six dimensions, so a 12-bidder package is compared as consistently as a 4-bidder one.
Every US state via peer-median normalization, no government data required. It compares each bidder against the median of your own received bids and needs no per-state government data, so you can start leveling DOT sub bids in any state on day one. New York and New Jersey also have built-in government baselines.
Yes. Peer-median normalization compares each bidder against the median of the bids you received for that package — your own subcontractors' numbers — not against other contractors' data. The baselines we ship are public pay-item references; your bid data stays in your account.
Bring one package's subcontractor bids — any state. We'll normalize them, flag the outliers, and score every bidder live.