Explain before automating
Matches expose their score, missing attributes, and hard conflicts before an estimator acts.
Rolling product whitepaper - July 26, 2026
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.
Matches expose their score, missing attributes, and hard conflicts before an estimator acts.
Source file, row, page, catalog version, reviewer, and reason follow every derived artifact.
No candidate becomes an RFQ line and no unresolved quote variance becomes proposal pricing automatically.
System model
The prototype uses dependency-free Python domain modules and a static HTML interface. Each stage narrows ambiguity while retaining the original source.
Deterministic core
Review boundary
Integration boundary
Rolling build log
Each sprint adds one reviewable capability layer. Status reflects the current local prototype, not a deployed production service.
Foundation
Defined data contracts, fixture validation, repository safeguards, and the first interactive preview.
BIM schedule intake
Added CSV intake, header detection, quantity aggregation, field validation, and source-row provenance.
Supplier catalog intake
Added catalog import, normalization, duplicate detection, conservative voltage compatibility, and filters.
Deterministic matching
Implemented transparent weighted scoring with hard electrical gates and repeatable candidate ordering.
Estimator review
Added unresolved queues, approval and rejection reasons, notes, exclusions, quantity provenance, and audit history.
RFQ package
Added approved-review requirements, SKU consistency, conflict rejection, BIM provenance, and deterministic JSON.
Quote and proposal
Added substitution and quantity-variance review, controlled markup, proposal gates, and a dedicated HTML workspace.
Document intelligence
Added page-level extraction contracts, OCR review gates, source-image provenance, and visual-suggestion safety boundaries.
Supplier integration
Added approved-channel authorization and SHA-256 verified catalog snapshots without credentials or network execution.
Operational readiness
Gates internal review on tests, provenance, synthetic-data policy, human decisions, credential findings, and integration state.
Private pilot foundation
Adds synthetic role and project contracts, tenant-aware access, exact retention periods, and checkpointed hash-chained audit records.
Authentication and data lifecycle
Adds tenant-bound session decisions, MFA and revocation gates, administrator-separated deletion, legal holds, verified backup bytes, and audit-head recovery checks.
Administration and assurance
Added session revocation, legal-hold release, supplier permission expiry, recovery-drill evidence, and a responsive synthetic administration dashboard.
Pilot workflow integration
Integrated authentication and authorization evidence into role-specific workflow decisions with reconstruction hardening.
Pilot operations and observability
Added correlated events, scoped health evidence, deterministic alerts, escalation timing, redacted diagnostics, and a synthetic operator dashboard.
Pilot configuration and change control
Adds scoped snapshots, computed digests, hardened drift evidence, separate approvals, ordered effective dates, fail-closed activation, rollback evidence, and a synthetic configuration dashboard.
Evidence reconstruction assurance
Adds rollback chronology context, hostile reconstruction regression coverage, and one explicit fail-closed configuration risk policy.
Pilot experience and accessibility
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.
Internal release candidate
Adds a synthetic RC manifest for tests, fixtures, repository audit, end-to-end acceptance, threat model, recovery, accessibility, and documentation.
Post-RC reconstruction hardening
Hardens RC evidence against subclass and reconstructed-object bypasses, exports the safe factory, and makes repository audit exercise the RC contract.
Audit evidence execution
Adds an opt-in audit mode that runs validation commands, records command evidence, and blocks internal review when executed evidence fails.
Private-pilot plan
Adds a synthetic governance plan for repository privacy, history audit, identity, storage, secrets, backup, supplier access, deployment approval, real-data governance, and human approval policy.
Governance approval matrix
Adds a synthetic matrix for pending, blocked, and approved private-pilot prerequisites, tied to a verified plan digest and exact gate order.
Demo polish
Adds a three-minute walkthrough, visible demo guardrails, and direct links from the main workspace to the whitepaper and approval matrix.
Demo script and review narrative
Adds a five-minute demo, 15-minute deep dive, stakeholder Q&A, and presenter guardrails that avoid production-readiness overclaims.
Demo QA
Adds presenter setup notes, talk-track QA, local URL checks, and link-target tests for the demo path.
Governance review prep
Adds owner, approval question, required evidence, blocker, current status, and non-authorizing boundary for every private-pilot gate.
Governance decision capture
Adds a decision log where each private-pilot gate starts pending and activation authority remains none.
Governance evidence intake
Adds a not-collected evidence intake row for every private-pilot gate, with public-repo evidence prohibitions and activation authority set to none.
Design system spec
Adds a root design contract covering tokens, layout, components, interactions, accessibility, and non-authorizing language.
UI conformance audit
Adds a source-level audit for tokens, shell conventions, safety language, review boundaries, and residual UI hardening work.
Quote DOM hardening
Replaces quote workspace dynamic HTML rendering with DOM creation and text assignment while preserving variance review gates.
Secondary DOM hardening
Replaces intake, catalog, and matching dynamic HTML rendering with DOM creation and text assignment.
Browser QA evidence
Adds a local-only browser QA evidence artifact for the shareable static workflow after DOM hardening.
Trust and control
The system prepares evidence and package-pricing requests. It does not place orders or submit bids.
Changed SKUs and quantities are visible, blocked from pricing, and require a documented human decision.
Supplier scraping, credentials in source, proprietary catalogs, and live integrations are prohibited.
OCR and image similarity can add evidence, but they cannot defeat incompatible electrical attributes.
Current checkpoint
The QA artifact pins the local route path for review, quote, intake, catalog, matching, whitepaper, and documentation checks while keeping deployment, providers, storage, suppliers, screenshots, and real data outside the authorized boundary.