AI for public tenders: from spec to bid.

Sixty pages of specification, a deadline and a section outside your speciality. Here is what an AI does well, what it does badly, and the order that stops it exposing you in front of an evaluator.

The problem isn't writing, it's reading

Nobody reads two full specifications before deciding whether to bid. And what decides the score isn't spread evenly: it's in the award criteria, which take up two pages and completely change where effort is worth spending. Writing ten magnificent pages about something worth three marks is this trade's classic mistake.

What it genuinely does well

Summarising a section of the specification WITH VERBATIM QUOTES. If it can't quote, it hasn't read it — and you now know what follows is padding.
Pulling out the award criteria and how many marks each is worth.
Giving you the structure of the bid: which sections, in what order, what goes in each.
Turning requirement into response: from "the contractor shall guarantee…" to what you will actually do.
Cross-checking: which requirement in the specification isn't answered in your draft.

What it does badly, and here it matters

It invents regulations, standards and certifications. They sound perfect and don't exist. If the evaluator spots it, you lose credibility across the whole document.
It commits to timescales, coverage and service levels that someone then has to deliver. Every number you check yourself, without exception.
It answers without having read the specification and covers for itself: it describes what such a document usually contains.

Why more than one AI helps here

A technical bid has no correct answer: it has approaches, and the approach is what scores. Ask one AI and you get one, convincing, with no way of knowing whether it's the right one or the first it thought of. With several in front of you, they agree on the underlying structure — that's the sector standard — and differ on emphasis: one leans on operations, another on governance, another on tooling. That disagreement is yours to choose from.

An order that works

Upload the documents and ask for a summary of the section with verbatim quotes.
Ask about the award criteria for that section.
Ask for the structure, not the text.
Fill in what is yours: real capability, experience, figures.
Ask for a cross-check against the specification: which requirement isn't answered.
Go through every number and every standard referenced by hand. All of them.

Before uploading a specification anywhere

The specification is public, but your bid isn't: it carries prices, names, capabilities and sometimes third-party data. Before pasting it into a chat, check where it ends up. We don't store your question or the verdict unless you turn history on, and nothing is used for training. Documents you shouldn't upload to an AI.

What you don't delegate

The part that says what you will do. An AI doesn't know who's on your payroll, what you've done that's comparable, or what you can commit to without it costing you money. That's exactly what gets scored, and it's the only thing it can't write for you.