Construction tenders: the agent prepares, you decide

In a construction SME, tenders are often prepared in the evening, between two sites, by the owner or the project manager. You have to spot the right contracts, read a thick consultation file, gather administrative documents, write a technical proposal, then reread everything before the deadline. An AI agent can take on a good part of this preparation work. It must not take the decisions. Here is how we split the roles.

Why tenders wear out SMEs

For many building and civil engineering companies, public and private tenders are an essential source of work. But every bid takes time, and that time is taken from production. Notices are scattered between the BOAMP, the buyer profiles of local authorities and private platforms. Every file has its own rules, forms and requirements.

The result: you answer what you had time to see, not necessarily the contracts where your chances are best. And a missing document or an expired certificate is enough to rule out a bid, whatever its technical quality.

What the agent does, step by step

1. Monitoring notices

The agent monitors the BOAMP and buyer profiles according to your criteria: area, trades, amounts, contract types. Every morning, it presents a short list of relevant notices, each with its subject, buyer, deadline and the reason it was selected. You keep control of the criteria, and you also see what was left out.

2. Reading the tender file

When you select a notice, the agent reads the consultation file: consultation rules, administrative and technical specifications, price schedules. It produces a summary sheet: what is required, the award criteria, the key dates, mandatory site visits, allowed variants, and the points that deserve your attention. Each item points to the document and paragraph it comes from, so you can check it in one click.

3. The documents to provide

The agent lists the documents requested and compares them with what you already have: application forms, social and tax certificates, company registration extract, insurance certificates, project references, staff and equipment. It flags what is missing and what expires before the deadline, so that the request goes out in time.

4. A first technical proposal

From your past bids, your references and the requirements of the technical specifications, the agent prepares a first draft of the technical proposal, organised by award criteria. It reuses what you have already written and approved, adapts it to the project, and clearly marks the passages to complete: specific methodology, schedule, planned subcontractors. The draft saves you the blank page, not the thinking.

5. The consistency review

Before submission, the agent checks that the file holds together: the lead times stated in the proposal match the schedule, the documents mentioned are attached, and each requirement of the technical specifications has an answer. It lists the gaps; correcting them is up to you.

An example: refurbishing a school

Picture a structural works company in the Lille area, whose monitoring is set to the Nord and Pas-de-Calais departments, masonry and structural lots, and mid-sized public contracts. On a Monday morning, the agent brings up three notices, including the refurbishment of a school by a neighbouring town, with a mandatory site visit the following Thursday.

The project manager selects the notice. They quickly get a summary sheet: the lot concerned, the award criteria and their weighting as stated in the rules, the dates, the visit, and an alert: the technical specifications require work on an occupied site, concentrated on the school holidays. The agent also flags that the ten-year liability insurance certificate expires before the deadline.

The project manager decides to bid. They chase the insurer, complete the occupied-site methodology from a similar project the agent found in the references, and set the price themselves. Before submission, the consistency review notes that the proposal’s schedule ignores the required holiday period: they fix it, then sign.

Nothing in this sequence was decided by the agent. But the project manager spent their time on the method and the price, not on hunting for documents or rereading the rules line by line.

What stays human

A tender commits the company. Some decisions cannot be delegated, and the agent is designed to stop before them:

• Whether to bid. The go/no-go depends on your workload, your margins and your knowledge of the buyer.
• The price. The agent can gather your reference prices; the final estimate and the margin remain yours.
• Technical commitments and lead times. What you promise in the proposal, you will have to deliver on site.
• Signing and submitting. The bid goes out under your name, after your review.

In Scalt, these steps are approvals: the agent prepares, then waits for your consent before going further. Every execution is traced, so you know who approved what and on which version of the file.

Your files stay yours

A tender file, your past proposals and your prices are sensitive documents: they are your know-how and your commercial position. In Scalt, they are hosted in France and are not used to train models. Each agent only reads what the person using it is allowed to read: a project manager sees their branch’s files, and so does the agent working for them, no more.

Prerequisites

An agent only does well what it can read. Before you start, gather:

• Your past bids, won or lost, with their technical proposals.
• Your project references, with their description, amount and client.
• Your certificates and administrative documents, stored in one place with their expiry dates.
• Your monitoring criteria: areas, trades, amounts, buyers you know.

Rolling out step by step

1. Start with monitoring alone, for a few weeks, to tune the criteria.
2. Add the tender file summary on the notices you select.
3. Connect the list of required documents and certificate tracking.
4. Move to the first draft of the technical proposal, comparing it with what you would have written.
5. Then extend to other site use cases: quotes, meeting reports, contract review.

At each step, judge on simple facts: the relevant notices you would have missed, the missing documents spotted in time, the passages of the proposal you kept as they were and those you rewrote. These observations, more than a general impression, tell you when to move to the next step and when to tune the agent again.

Frequently asked questions