Your Bid Estimation Agent Chases Sub Quotes and Drafts the Bid Sheet
The Bid Estimation Agent does the chasing and the first draft so your senior estimator is not spending bid week on the phone and in spreadsheets. The AgentWorks Bid Estimation Agent sends the invitations to bid, chases subcontractor quotes, runs quantity takeoffs from the digital plans and builds the first draft of the bid spreadsheet, all before the estimator opens the file.
What it takes off your plate
Here is how bids go at a lot of contractors. Quantity takeoffs are done by hand from PDF plans. The bid spreadsheet is assembled from quotes that came in by email, text, voicemail and a PDF on someone's desktop. Version control is chaos: the estimator is never sure which sheet has the latest electrical number.
Bid day is dominated by chasing subs for quotes. The coverage matrix lives on a whiteboard or in someone's head. Critical scopes go uncovered when a sub never responds, and the team scrambles in the last hours. The estimator who should be thinking about means and methods, risk and markup is instead on the phone asking a drywall sub if their number is coming.
What the Bid Estimation Agent does, step by step
The Bid Estimation Agent starts with the communication that eats bid week:
- Sends the invitations. When a project goes out to bid, it emails the invitation to bid through Gmail to the subs on your list for each scope, with the plans, specs and due date, and texts them through Twilio.
- Tracks who is bidding. It records who confirmed, who declined and who went quiet, and keeps the coverage matrix current by scope.
- Chases the quotes. It follows up with every sub who has not submitted, on the schedule you set, and flags any scope with thin coverage to the estimator early enough to find another sub.
- Answers or routes questions. Scope questions from subs get answered from the bid documents when the answer is there; anything that needs a judgment goes to the estimator.
- Sends the addenda. When an addendum drops, it goes to every bidding sub, and the agent confirms they received it.
- Runs the takeoff. It reads the digital plans in PlanSwift, counts and measures quantities, and flags what changed with each addendum.
- Drafts the bid sheet. It levels the sub quotes by scope, pulls material pricing, and builds the first draft of the bid spreadsheet in Excel. Markup, contingency and the final number belong to the senior estimator.
Where the work is recorded
An agent that cannot record its results is a chatbot. Every invitation, reply and follow-up the Bid Estimation Agent sends lands on the sub's contact record and the project in the CRM your team already sees. The quotes, the coverage matrix and the takeoff live with the project in Procore, and the bid sheet carries a version history.
The next morning your estimator opens one file and sees which scopes are covered, which subs are late, which addenda changed quantities and where the draft stands. A person picks up exactly where the agent left off, whether that is the chief estimator reviewing the draft or a project manager checking coverage on a scope they know well. For more on keeping takeoffs current through revisions, read how estimators handle addenda.
What your people do instead
Your senior estimator spends bid week on the judgment only they can bring: walking the site, reviewing the scope gaps, deciding where the risk is and setting the number. Your project executives spend time with the client, the owner or the architect on the relationship that wins the next job, instead of asking the office whether the plumbing quote came in.
Your superintendents stay in the field, since estimating is no longer pulling them in to recount fixtures. And when the job is won, clean records follow it into the field, which is where the daily reports agent picks up.
Customer service and client satisfaction are the human job. The AgentWorks Bid Estimation Agent keeps the quotes, the coverage and the draft moving around your people, so every bid goes out complete and on time.
One next step
Not sure whether bid estimation is the first workflow to hand over? The free Industry Assessment looks at your preconstruction, field and project management work and shows which workflow an agent should take first. You can see the full set of construction agents on the construction industry page.
See where the Bid Estimation Agent would start in your construction business.
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