Tender response writer for engineering consultancies in India

The problem

An Indian consultancy tender arrives as a bundle: notice inviting tenders, terms of reference, eligibility criteria, bid formats. One missed requirement can knock a bid out; one overstated claim can do worse.

How it works

1. Enter the project name and your company name; the latter is required.
2. Upload up to five PDF or Word tender documents, 5 MB each, or paste the text, then check and edit it. One extraction reads up to 200,000 characters; a longer upload says so.
3. Select Extract Requirements. It picks out numbered, lettered and bulleted items, table rows, sentences with an obligation word ("shall", "must", "is to") or naming the bidder, and labelled values ("EMD: Rs. 2,00,000/-"). A capitals line is a heading unless it has an obligation word or is an item with a figure. It reads English only. It files requirements in eight categories by Indian keywords, or as Uncategorised when none fits or two tie. Priority comes from wording: high or medium from a word such as "must" or "should"; high from a heading such as "Eligibility Criteria" when the item has no priority word or only "should"; standard when waived ("not required", "are exempted from"); unrated when there is no priority word. It lists, with line numbers, the lines it did not read and the capitals lines it read as headings. It is rule-based, not AI.
4. Choose a cover letter, technical proposal, fee proposal or capability statement, or upload a template.
5. Select Generate Response. AI drafts the document from the project name, your company name and the extracted requirements. It is told to name an IS code by number only, never to state a value or requirement of an Indian Standard or the NBC that the tender does not state, and to name the NBC edition only if the tender does, else to leave a placeholder. A sentence naming an IS code beside a measurement, grade or design factor not in the tender, your company details or the template is removed and quoted, values withheld, in a caution at the top. Programme periods, requirements stated without a figure, and values beside no IS code stay. You can export the draft as a PDF.

Know what the AI is given: your company name and the requirements list, nothing else. It is told to write a bracketed placeholder for any fact it was not given, and to leave fees as placeholders. Models can ignore instructions, so read every sentence as a claim you are about to make. Above the draft, a caution lists each sum, number of years, head count, founding year or listed credential nobody supplied, and each figure the tender asks for that the draft says you have ("the tender asks for this; the draft says you have it"). Export asks first while any is listed. It is a pattern check: a claim made in words alone is not seen.

Worked example

Illustrative input, not a real tender: a municipal request for proposal for a school. Five numbered items ask for PI insurance, a lead engineer with ten years' experience on similar works, a methodology and QA plan, an EMD, and design to the NBC and the relevant IS codes. A bullet lists the deliverables; it ends with the closing time and "NO LATE PROPOSALS WILL BE ACCEPTED."

The tool returns eight requirements in six categories, five of them high priority: the four items with "must" or "shall", and the late-proposals line. The other three are unrated, the methodology item and the closing time among them. Both closing lines are filed under Programme & Timeline. The "Deliverables:" label is listed as not read, the two capitals lines at the top as read as headings. A test reads these numbers from this page and repeats the run.

What it doesn't do

• It can still claim things you can't back up. A claim you do not hold may amount to misleading conduct and can void a contract. Verify every one.
• It doesn't know your facts. Check every claim, price, date and commitment.
• It is told to cite only the IS numbers on its list. IS 1893 is listed as a bare number, with no part; a part the list does not hold is shown with an alert, and for a standard not on the list the draft writes "[STANDARD — confirm]".
• It can miss or misread requirements and deadlines. Prose without an obligation word or a flattened table can be skipped; a keyword can misfile one. Read the original tender.
• It does not read scanned documents. Paste their text by hand.
• Its PDF export prints a limited character set. It writes ₹ as "Rs." and refuses non-Latin text.
• It is not legal or commercial advice.