Explain before automating
Matches expose their score, missing attributes, and hard conflicts before an estimator acts.
Rolling product whitepaper · July 12, 2026
A review-first bid engine for traceable electrical package pricing.
BIM Bid Engine turns normalized electrical schedule data into explainable supplier candidates, estimator-approved RFQ packages, reconciled quotes, and controlled proposal pricing. Every derived result preserves its evidence, and every material decision remains human-controlled.
Provenance by default
Source file, row, page, catalog version, reviewer, and reason follow every derived artifact.
Human approval is a gate
No candidate becomes an RFQ line and no unresolved quote variance becomes proposal pricing automatically.
System model
One evidence chain, nine delivery stages.
The prototype uses dependency-free Python domain modules and a static HTML interface. Each stage narrows ambiguity while retaining the original source.
InputBIM scheduleCSV, document pages
→NormalizeTyped itemsSource-row provenance
→MatchCandidatesEvidence and conflicts
→ReviewDecisionsActor, reason, audit
→CommercialRFQ and quoteVariance-controlled pricing
Deterministic core
Electrical compatibility stays authoritative.
- Category, voltage, wattage, and mounting are hard gates.
- Image similarity retrieves candidates but never overrides conflicts.
- Scores are repeatable and visible to the estimator.
Review boundary
Automation proposes; estimators decide.
- Approval, rejection, exclusions, notes, and quantity changes are audited.
- Supplier substitutions are re-checked for electrical compatibility before review.
- Readiness fails while required decisions remain unresolved.
Integration boundary
Supplier access begins with permission.
- Only approved API, export, punchout, or explicit-permission channels qualify.
- Catalog versions and content digests create immutable snapshots.
- Credentials, scraping, and live access remain outside the public prototype.
Rolling build log
From contract-first foundation to operational gates.
Each sprint adds one reviewable capability layer. Status reflects the current local prototype, not a deployed production service.
- 0Complete
Foundation
Product boundaries and synthetic evidence
Defined data contracts, fixture validation, repository safeguards, and the first interactive preview.
- Synthetic-only committed fixtures
- Dependency-free validation
- No active supplier integration
- 1Complete
BIM schedule intake
Normalize Revit-exported schedule data
Added CSV intake, header detection, quantity aggregation, field validation, and source-row provenance.
- 2Complete
Supplier catalog intake
Create a trusted searchable product pool
Added catalog import, normalization, duplicate detection, conservative voltage compatibility, and filters.
- 3Complete
Deterministic matching
Rank candidates and expose every conflict
Implemented transparent weighted scoring with hard electrical gates and repeatable candidate ordering.
- 4Complete
Estimator review
Turn eligible candidates into human decisions
Added unresolved queues, approval and rejection reasons, notes, exclusions, quantity provenance, and audit history.
- 5Complete
RFQ package
Assemble traceable supplier request lines
Added approved-review requirements, SKU consistency, conflict rejection, BIM provenance, and deterministic JSON.
- 6Complete
Quote and proposal
Reconcile supplier responses before pricing
Added substitution and quantity-variance review, controlled markup, proposal gates, and a dedicated HTML workspace.
- 7Complete
Document intelligence
Preserve evidence from PDF, OCR, and images
Added page-level extraction contracts, OCR review gates, source-image provenance, and visual-suggestion safety boundaries.
- 8Complete
Supplier integration
Define permission-based catalog access
Added approved-channel authorization and SHA-256 verified catalog snapshots without credentials or network execution.
- 9Complete
Operational readiness
Make safety boundaries testable release gates
Gates internal review on tests, provenance, synthetic-data policy, human decisions, credential findings, and integration state.
- End-to-end synthetic workflow validated
- Repeatable repository audit passing
- Deployment remains disabled
- 10Complete
Private pilot foundation
Define access, isolation, retention, and durable audit boundaries
Adds synthetic role and project contracts, tenant-aware access, exact retention periods, and checkpointed hash-chained audit records.
- 11Complete
Authentication and data lifecycle
Fail closed across sessions, deletion, backup, and recovery
Adds tenant-bound session decisions, MFA and revocation gates, administrator-separated deletion, legal holds, verified backup bytes, and audit-head recovery checks.
- 12Complete
Administration and assurance
Make private-pilot controls visible and reviewable
Added session revocation, legal-hold release, supplier permission expiry, recovery-drill evidence, and a responsive synthetic administration dashboard.
- 13Complete
Pilot workflow integration
Fail closed across sessions, tenants, projects, and roles
Integrated authentication and authorization evidence into role-specific workflow decisions with reconstruction hardening.
- 14Complete
Pilot operations and observability
Make operations diagnosable without external telemetry
Added correlated events, scoped health evidence, deterministic alerts, escalation timing, redacted diagnostics, and a synthetic operator dashboard.
- 15Complete
Pilot configuration and change control
Make configuration versioned, attributable, and reversible
Adds scoped snapshots, computed digests, hardened drift evidence, separate approvals, ordered effective dates, fail-closed activation, rollback evidence, and a synthetic configuration dashboard.
- Unknown settings fail closed as security-sensitive
- Rollback creates a new version from a chronologically historical target
- Infrastructure mutation, secrets, and deployment automation remain prohibited
- 16Complete
Evidence reconstruction assurance
Keep security evidence self-verifying after reconstruction
Adds rollback chronology context, hostile reconstruction regression coverage, and one explicit fail-closed configuration risk policy.
- 148 automated tests passing
- All configuration evidence rejects non-synthetic reconstruction
- Persistence, providers, supplier access, and deployment remain disabled
- 17Complete
Pilot experience and accessibility
Make the review workspace easier to operate and audit
Adds keyboard-friendly review queues, live status announcements, focus restoration after row rebuilds, DOM-safe rendering, and regression tests for the main pilot review surface.
- 153 automated tests passing
- Review queue tabs expose selected state and roving focus
- Human approval and synthetic-only boundaries remain intact
- 18Complete
Internal release candidate
Freeze acceptance evidence without expanding authority
Adds a synthetic RC manifest for tests, fixtures, repository audit, end-to-end acceptance, threat model, recovery, accessibility, and documentation.
- 159 automated tests passing
- Deployment, live supplier access, and real data remain disallowed
- Missing, duplicate, failed, or non-synthetic gates are rejected
- 19In progress
Post-RC reconstruction hardening
Close the release-gate reconstruction gap
Hardens RC evidence against subclass and reconstructed-object bypasses, exports the safe factory, and makes repository audit exercise the RC contract.
- 164 automated tests passing
- Audit output now includes inert RC authority evidence
- Deployment, live supplier access, and real data remain disallowed
Trust and control
What the prototype intentionally does not do.
No automatic purchasing
The system prepares evidence and package-pricing requests. It does not place orders or submit bids.
No silent substitutions
Changed SKUs and quantities are visible, blocked from pricing, and require a documented human decision.
No unapproved data access
Supplier scraping, credentials in source, proprietary catalogs, and live integrations are prohibited.
No visual override
OCR and image similarity can add evidence, but they cannot defeat incompatible electrical attributes.
Current checkpoint
A hardened synthetic RC, ready for independent review.
The RC evidence is exercised by repository audit while keeping deployment, real data, and live supplier access outside the authorized boundary. The consolidated release-review bundle captures the validation snapshot, residuals, and private-pilot prerequisites.