Built Logic

The final tender check went from a day to 30 minutes

At Kristian’s construction company, a main contractor building and refurbishing high-end homes for private clients, the final check on every tender used to take Kristian a full day. It takes 30 minutes now: about 20 days a year back for clients, site and winning the next job.

Could this check our tenders?

Key results

  • 1 day → 30 minChecking the tender before it goes out
  • 40 → 28 hoursEstimating time on each tender
  • 14Items priced before the return date, over about 10 tenders
The business
High-end homes
Service
Tender Checking
Live in
5 weeks
Paid back in
Approx 7 weeks
Size
80+ staff

Background

The company priced about 25 tenders a year, mostly high-end homes for private clients through architects. Specs were long and full of named finishes, PC sums and provisional items, and 2 estimators priced each one in about 40 hours between them.

The challenge

Before a tender went out, the estimating manager and Kristian as MD went through it line by line. Was every package priced? Were there plugs left in? Did the spec items all have a rate? Were the subcontractors’ exclusions covered somewhere? That took a full day, usually the day before the return.

It was the part Kristian couldn’t hand off, because his name went on the price. And on a 40-hour tender, a gap is hard to spot by eye.

1 dayon every tender, the day before the return, checking what had and hadn’t been priced

“My name was on the price, so I had to know what was in it. That was a day every time.”

Kristian Brown, co-founder of Built Logic

The solution

Code does the arithmetic checks: every package priced, no plugs left in, margin laid out by package. AI reads the spec and the subcontractors’ quotes, because every architect and every subcontractor words things differently, and points to anything without a price.

What we built

  • Reads the documents. It lists every finish, PC sum and provisional item in the spec, and matches the drawings to each room.
  • Drafts the enquiries. It builds the packages, drafts each enquiry, and chases the subcontractors who haven’t replied.
  • Lines up the quotes. It puts the quotes side by side and flags each exclusion, with the page it came from.
  • Checks the tender. Every package priced, every spec item with a rate, every exclusion covered, each gap with its page.
  • Builds the review pack. A risk list and margin by package, so the MD signs it off in 30 minutes.

Tech stack

It runs on the company’s own Microsoft 365 and Azure accounts. It works alongside the tools the company already uses.

SharePoint Excel Outlook Teams Power Automate Azure AI Document Intelligence Azure OpenAI RIB CostX Bluebeam Revu NBS Chorus

The results

  1. 01

    A day of the MD’s time back on every tender

    The review pack shows what isn’t priced and where it is in the spec. The MD reads that, not the whole tender, and spends the day on clients, site and the next job.

  2. 02

    14 open items priced in time

    Over about 10 tenders, all before the tender went out. Mostly named finishes in the spec still to get a rate, and subcontractor exclusions still to cover.

  3. 03

    12 hours back on each tender

    Most of it from reading the spec and chasing quotes.

  4. 04

    The take-off stayed with the estimators

    AI counts from the schedules. The estimators still take off from the drawings.

“In my own company, we took tender checks from a day down to 30 minutes.”

Kristian Brown, co-founder of Built Logic

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