Inside Bid Reasoner: how it levels 5–15 sub bids per package.
The full workflow, every feature, and the trust model — the depth behind the homepage, for estimators who want to see how it actually works. ← Back to home
Bid leveling is still done by hand.
Heavy-civil GCs receive 5–15 subcontractor bids per package. Estimators spend days normalizing apples-to-oranges scope, chasing missing line items, and second-guessing the low number. And then they pick a winner from gut feel — with no audit trail when the choice gets questioned six months later.
Storing bids isn't the same as reasoning over them.
Every "bid management" tool on the market is a filing cabinet. They hold PDFs. They don't read them.
Documentation
- PDFs upload and sit in folders
- Your estimator still normalizes scope manually
- No risk flags, no cost projection
- Data never learns from prior jobs
Reasoning
- Extracts line items from any bid format
- Scores bidders across six dimensions, with evidence quoted from each PDF
- Recommends a winner — with a paragraph of reasoning and a confidence score
- Captures override category + reason every time you go against the AI
From mailbox to decision in minutes.
Five steps. No configuration. No template-fitting. Works with whatever your subs send you.
Forward or invite
Forward sub bid emails to your tenant inbox — Bid Reasoner auto-matches them to the open invitation. Or invite subs by email; they get a magic link to a portal where they sign up, accept, and upload. PDF, Excel, Word, phone snaps — any format your subs send.
Read & normalize
Every line item in every PDF gets extracted, mapped to your scope of work, and normalized so bidders are comparable. Scope-coverage gaps surface automatically — items in your SOW the bidder didn't quote, items the bidder bid that weren't in your SOW. For items a bidder didn't quote, Bid Reasoner plugs a projected price — the peer median across your own bidders by default, sharpened with a government baseline (New York, New Jersey) where the code matches. Works in any state.
Score & recommend
Every bidder is scored on six dimensions: price, scope alignment, schedule, compliance, past performance, and risk. The Reasoning Workspace recommends a winner with a confidence score and a paragraph of reasoning — every finding backed by a quote from the actual bid PDF, with page number.
Challenge & accept
Switch decision modes (Lowest Responsible Bid, Best Value, Schedule Priority, etc.) to see the trade-offs. Run what-if scenarios — "what if the GC absorbs site welding?" — and watch the recommendation update. Click ✓ or ✗ on each finding to feed your judgment back into the system.
Award & defend
Pick a winner. If you agree with the AI, just capture rationale. If you disagree, an override category + reason are required — building a permanent audit record. Bid Reasoner generates the Reasoned Award Memo, Evidence Report, Bidder Scorecard, and four other Word docs automatically. Winner + decline emails go on click.
Built for the way estimators actually think.
Every adjustment is labeled. Every projection shows its work. Your senior estimator can still argue with it — that's the point.
Reasoning Workspace
Per-package recommendation page with AI bidder evaluations across six dimensions, reasoning evidence backed by quotes from each PDF, click-to-explain confidence scores, and a what-if challenge box. Switch between seven decision modes to see how price-priority vs risk-priority changes the winner. The single most important page in the product.
- Custom Weighting — tailor each of the six weights (price, scope, compliance, schedule, performance, risk) to your project's priorities.
- Mode chips preview, don't run — switch modes to see the weights, re-run only when you're ready. No AI burn.
Override capture & audit trail
When you award against the AI's recommendation, an override category and reason are required — not optional. Every disagreement creates a permanent audit record. When an owner asks "why this bidder?" six months later, the answer is one click away.
- Decision Review Needed alerts surface every package waiting on a human look before award — on the dashboard AND inside the package, so nothing slips.
Auto-generated decision documents
Seven Word document types — Reasoned Award Memo, Bid Reasoning Report, Evidence Report, Bidder Scorecard, Executive Summary, Clarification Recommendations, Project Handoff Rationale — populated from the underlying data. Real .docx, not screenshots. Pull a fresh copy any time.
Scope-coverage gap analysis
For every bidder, surfaces the line items in your SOW that the bidder didn't quote — and the items the bidder bid that weren't in your SOW. Find scope gaps and scope creep before award, not after. Works on any project, any code system.
Deterministic risk findings
Not opaque AI: unbalanced unit prices (≤ $1.00), peer outliers (>2× or <0.5× peer median), total-bid outliers (>20% deviation), and front-loaded mobilization (>10% of total). Click any chip to filter the matrix to those flagged items.
Pay-item normalization & baseline pricing
Every bidder's line items are mapped to canonical names and normalized against the peer median of your own bids — works in any state, no government data required. Where a public catalog exists, it sharpens the estimate: select states such as New York and New Jersey DOT baselines are built in today, with more states added as partners come online. For items a bidder didn't quote, the projection plugs the peer median first, then a government baseline where the code matches. Specialty or non-catalog items the comparison view flags as coverage gaps explicitly — projected cost is a floor, not a ceiling.
Tracked clarifications, no email chains
Every Q&A with a sub is a tracked thread, not a buried email. Subs answer through their portal. The system flags when a response revises pricing — your leveling table updates accordingly. Closed clarifications stay attached to the award memo.
Sub solicitation & portal
Invite subs by email — they get a magic link to a portal where they sign up, accept or decline, upload bids through a 4-step wizard, and acknowledge addenda. Or forward bid emails to your tenant inbox; sender is auto-matched to the open invitation.
Built for an industry where decisions get questioned.
When the project owner asks "why this bidder?", the answer needs to hold up to legal review.
Tenant isolation
Every customer's data is row-level isolated. We run 21 read-only invariant checks before every deploy that confirm zero rows leak between tenants. Your bids, scopes, and awards are never visible to another GC.
Audit log on every privileged action
Feature changes, plan changes, budget changes, manual retries, email resends. Every super-admin action is logged with timestamp, reason, and before/after values.
Read-only support mode
When our team needs to look into your tenant for support, we enter Support Mode with a required reason + ticket reference. All writes are blocked at the middleware layer for the duration. 60-minute hard auto-expiry. Every blocked write is logged.
Explainable by design
Every adjustment carries the source document, the page number, and the math. No black-box scoring. Override anything; the override is part of the record.
Bring a live bid package. We'll level it with you.
Bid Reasoner is live in private beta with a hand-picked group of heavy-civil general contractors. Founding partners get introductory pricing, founder-direct support, and direct influence on what the model learns from their team's decisions. Once the cohort is full, the founding rate goes away.