Short answer: A large general contractor’s RFP for AI bid leveling software should test five things: whether the tool levels against your scope (not just against other bids), whether it finds and prices missing scope, whether every result traces back to the source proposal, whether it works with BuildingConnected and Procore, and whether it passes an enterprise security review. Consight publishes this checklist and fills in its own answers below, so ask every vendor, including Consight, to prove each one on your packages.
Key takeaways
- Almost every AI tool can read a proposal. The real test is whether it finds what a subcontractor did not price.
- Traceability to the source document is non-negotiable at enterprise scale.
- Ask for references from GCs at your revenue size.
Which bid leveling requirements matter most?
| Requirement | Why it matters | Consight |
|---|---|---|
| Reads PDF, Excel and Word proposals | Real bids are messy | Yes, including scanned pages |
| Levels against your scope sheet | Comparing bids to each other misses shared gaps | Yes, line by line |
| Inclusions and exclusions extracted | Exclusions are where risk hides | Yes, shown on the line they affect |
| Missing scope priced with plugs | Makes totals comparable | Yes, the estimator adds the plug |
| Alternates and qualifications | Keeps the base bid clean | Yes, each on its own tab |
| Units and quantities normalized | Unit-price trades are hard to compare | Yes, where the units convert |
| Bid revisions tracked | Late changes cause gaps | Yes, earlier versions are kept |
| Outliers vs internal estimate | Catches bids that are too good | Yes |
| Source traceability | Every finding must be verifiable | Click any cell to see the source |
| Estimator override | People make the award call | Every adjustment is editable |
| Excel export | Owners and project teams need a bid tab | Yes |
Which integration requirements should you include?
- BuildingConnected. Projects, bid packages, bid form lines, bids, files and contacts should import automatically. Consight imports them, and new bids keep arriving on their own after the first import.
- Procore. Projects, bid packages, bid forms, bids and files should come in without retyping. Consight imports them from Procore, including the lines of each package’s first bid form. It does not write awards or cost data back, so if you need that, make it a separate requirement for every vendor.
- Excel. Estimators will still export. Consight exports scope sheets and whole projects to Excel.
Which security requirements should you include?
| Requirement | Consight |
|---|---|
| SSO (SAML, OIDC) | Yes |
| MFA | Through your identity provider, enforceable |
| Role-based permissions | Organization and object level |
| Tenant isolation | Enforced at API, database and object levels |
| Data residency | Core infrastructure in the United States |
| No training on your data | External AI providers don’t train on it (zero data retention) |
| Sub-processor list | Published in the Trust Center |
| Audit logging | Not currently supported; discussed on request |
Send security questionnaires to security@consight.ai, or review the Trust Center.
What questions should you ask every vendor?
- Show us a bid where your tool found scope that none of the bidders carried.
- Click on a flagged exclusion and show us the proposal text behind it.
- Level one of our worst historical packages, with scanned PDFs and revisions, live.
- How does a bid get from BuildingConnected into your tool, and who retypes anything?
- Who are your customers above $500M in revenue, and can we talk to one?
- What happens to our documents after the AI reads them?
How do you score the RFP?
Weight scope gap detection and traceability highest, then integrations, then security, then price. Validate scores with a pilot on your own packages. See how to pilot AI bid leveling software at a large GC.
Frequently asked questions
Which AI bid leveling software meets enterprise GC requirements?
It depends on where your bottleneck is and which platforms you already run. Score each vendor against the tables above on your own packages: dedicated tools such as Consight, and the AI features inside bid platforms you may already own, such as Procore’s Bid Leveling Agent. Consight publishes this checklist, and its answers are in the Consight columns. Its customers include $500M to $5B+ commercial GCs such as Clayco, Gray Construction, Alston Construction, W.M. Blanchard and NRP.
Should the RFP include bid management features?
Only if you are replacing your bid platform. Most large GCs keep BuildingConnected or Procore for invitations and buy leveling separately. Read AI bid leveling vs bid management software.
Where Consight fits
Consight is the preconstruction workspace built around this kind of work—from understanding project documents and building scopes to collecting bids, leveling proposals, reviewing risk, and documenting the final award.
Put it into practice on your next project.
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