Case · a Western European rail electronics supplier
A bid managed with these tools, inside a client's team
This was not a demonstration. A rail electronics supplier engaged us as bid manager for a public tender, and the bid was run with the systems described on this site — the Tender Wikipedia over the supplier's own material and the agents of the Bid Stack — from the day the documents were published to submission. What follows is what that produced, in the order it happened.
Within 24 hours: the bid overview
Key points, red flags, risks, contradictions between documents, and the questions worth putting to the tendering authority, read from several hundred pages in the authority's language. Work that conventionally takes a bid team its first two weeks.
- ITT Vol. 2Technical requirements
- Annex CAvailability
- Price schedulePrice items
- Key points
- Series retrofit of all 14 vehicles within 26 months of contract award.ITT Vol. 2 · §4.3.1
- Red flags
- Fleet availability is defined twice, differently.Annex C · §2 · ITT Vol. 2 · §6.2
- Risks
- One of three penalty regimes is unclear about whether a cap applies.ITT Vol. 2 · §4.3 · Annex C · §2
- Contradictions
- Software maintenance: five years in the requirements, three in the price schedule.ITT Vol. 2 · §8.3 · Price schedule · item 5.1
- Questions for the authority
- How is fleet availability measured while vehicles are out for retrofit?Annex C · §2
Fictional tender and findings, on the same retrofit as the other examples.
Within 24 hours: the penalty calculator
Three distinct penalty regimes in the contract, one of them unclear about whether a cap applied. We built an interactive calculator so the bid team and the managing director could see total exposure change as assumptions changed, rather than reading clauses.
| Regime · source | Your plan | Exposure |
|---|---|---|
| First vehicle back in service · € 30 k per week beyond month 14R-042 · ITT Vol. 2 · §4.3 · cap 5 % | month 15 | € 130 k |
| Series retrofit completed · € 45 k per week beyond month 26R-043 · ITT Vol. 2 · §4.3.1 · cap 7.5 % | month 26 | € 0 |
| Fleet availability below 98.5 % · € 8 k per 0.1 pp per monthR-044 · Annex C · §2 · cap 4 % · definition open | 98.3 % | € 416 k |
Illustrative regimes and rates on the same fictional tender. Adjust the plan to see the exposure move.
Within the first week: the spare-parts calculator
A calculator derived from more than five hundred pages of technical documentation, produced in about 45 minutes including two review iterations, against an estimated week of a procurement engineer's time.
including two review iterations · against a procurement engineer's time
| Part | Source | Per vehicle | Fleet · 14 | Spares | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Onboard computer unitTech. doc. vol. 1 · p. 34 | Tech. doc. vol. 1 · p. 34 | 1 | 14 | 2 | per vehicle 1 · fleet 142 spares |
| Driver displayTech. doc. vol. 1 · p. 118 | Tech. doc. vol. 1 · p. 118 | 2 | 28 | 3 | per vehicle 2 · fleet 283 spares |
| Balise antennaTech. doc. vol. 2 · p. 212 | Tech. doc. vol. 2 · p. 212 | 2 | 28 | 4 | per vehicle 2 · fleet 284 spares |
| Odometry sensorTech. doc. vol. 2 · p. 257 | Tech. doc. vol. 2 · p. 257 | 2 | 28 | 4 | per vehicle 2 · fleet 284 spares |
Fictional parts and quantities, on the same retrofit as the other examples.
Within the first week: the scope and cost map
Every scope element the tender required, laid against where a price item had been allocated in the bid documents or the Q&A. The gaps were visible at a glance, and were raised with the authority before they became a pricing problem.
| ID | Scope element | source | Price item | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| S-01 | Onboard units, supply for 14 vehicles | ITT Vol. 2 · §4.1 | Price schedule · item 1.1 | allocated |
| S-02 | Installation and commissioning, per vehicle | ITT Vol. 2 · §4.3 | Price schedule · item 2.1 | allocated |
| S-03 | Safety case update and type approval | ITT Vol. 2 · §5.2 | Price schedule · item 3.4 | allocated |
| S-04 | Driver and maintainer training | ITT Vol. 2 · §7.1 | Q&A no. 17 — included in item 2.1 | via Q&A |
| S-05 | Spare parts for the retrofit period | ITT Vol. 2 · §4.6 | none found | gap |
| S-06 | Measures to hold fleet availability during the retrofit | Annex C · §2 | none found | gap |
| S-07 | Software maintenance, five years after acceptance | ITT Vol. 2 · §8.3 | Price schedule · item 5.1 — three years only | partial |
Fictional tender, scope and price schedule, on the same retrofit as the other examples.
Throughout: source-verified outputs
Every claim in every document was checked back against the tender; adjacent text re-read to confirm the interpretation; assessments labelled as assessments. This is the reason the team could act on the analysis instead of re-doing it.
Series retrofit of the onboard signalling equipment shall be completed for all 14 vehicles within 26 months of contract award.
ITT Vol. 2 · §4.3.1 · p. 87 · R-043
„Das erste nachgerüstete Fahrzeug ist spätestens im 14. Monat nach Auftragsvergabe wieder in Betrieb zu nehmen; die Serien-Nachrüstung erfolgt in Losen von jeweils zwei Fahrzeugen.“
Two vehicles out of service at any time between month 14 and month 26. Read the availability clause in Annex C §2 against this.
One requirement from a tender, as the verification layer returns it: the claim quoted, its source cited, the surrounding text re-read in German, and the assessment kept apart from the fact.
For the writers: response templates
Per-document templates referencing the exact tender sections, requirements and scoring criteria each answer had to hit, so the people writing could write rather than search.
Answer 4.3 · Delivery programme
responds to ITT Vol. 2 · §4.3Fictional template, on the same retrofit as the other examples.
What the team did with it
The systems took the reading and the cross-checking off the team's desks. The time that freed went into the work only the team could do.
Each specialist started from a sourced summary of the requirements that touched their area, rather than from the raw tender, and spent their hours on the answers, where their knowledge of the product and the customer made the difference.
The team as a whole met regularly. The bid manager kept everyone informed as findings and the authority's answers came in, and brought in legal, procurement, project management and finance wherever their expertise was needed. Their knowledge of the domain and of how the company works steered how the systems were used: which findings to pursue, which to set aside, and which questions to put to the authority. Because every point on the table carried its source, discussions moved quickly from what the tender said to what the supplier should do about it.
Where the systems fell short, it was in interpretation: a passage translated slightly out of context, or a requirement read more rigidly than it was written. The verification layer caught these before they reached a decision, and none led to a problem in the bid.
What this shows
The systems did the reading, the cross-checking and the drafting. The bid team did the judging. That division of labour is what we mean by AI in production, and it is available to any supplier with a tender on the desk.