Book a call

About · the founder · why this exists

Built by someone who has sat where you sit.

More than ten years as a commercial lead in public-transport technology, across payments, ticketing, MaaS and DRT, and across bus, rail and ferry. Thousands of hours writing, pricing and submitting bids. economAIcs exists because I watched good companies lose contracts they deserved to win, not because their operations were weaker, but because their bids were.

More about Benjamin Ross, the founder

£5bn+Tendered in UK transport each year
10+ yrsFounder's commercial lead in transport technology
Bus, rail & ferryPayments, ticketing, MaaS and DRT
100%Outputs source-cited

Three scars

Every part of this product is a lesson paid for.

  • The £500k on a golf course

    On a golf course, a transport director told me he had nearly submitted a bid that would have cost his company £500,000. He had asked a generic AI for an average driver salary. It invented one, and was seven percent out. He caught it a day before the deadline. Most people would not have. That is why economAIcs never invents a figure: every number is pulled from your own evidence and cited.

  • Lost by four percent

    I once lost a multi-million-pound bid by four percent. Not on quality, on price. We had built it bottom up and guessed, with no models and no analysis. Four percent is the gap between guessing and knowing. That is why the Brain bids from evidence, with the drivers shown, not from instinct.

  • The wrong partner, twice

    I once chose a consortium partner over a coffee and a handshake at a conference, not on the quality of their work. We lost, to a partner who had approached us first, because I had already made up my mind. On another bid I could not see how a partner was progressing until it was too late, and we had to swap them out mid-pursuit. That is why we are building partner intelligence scored on evidence, not on who you met last.

The story

Why this exists.

The UK public transport sector tenders over £5bn in contracts every year. The operators bidding for them are specialists: they know their fleets, their routes, their communities. What they do not always have is the intelligence to turn that knowledge into winning bids.

More than ten years inside that gap, as a commercial lead in public-transport technology, across payments, ticketing, MaaS and DRT, and across bus, rail and ferry. Thousands of hours writing, pricing and submitting bids, and a long list of lost ones that taught me more than the wins did. Through every regulatory cycle, from the pre-Procurement Act frameworks to the Procurement Act 2023 itself. economAIcs is built for the regime as it stands today, not retrofitted to it.

I built economAIcs to fix that asymmetry. Not a generic AI layer bolted onto an existing product, but a bespoke Brain designed from the ground up for public transport procurement: the terminology, the evaluation frameworks, the transparency obligations, the social-value weightings. The tool I wished existed when I was sitting across the table from procurement panels.

Built for operators, transport-tech vendors and consultancies who want to win more, wait less and learn faster. Built so the audit is the default state, not a panic at the end. Built so the next bid starts ahead, not from zero.

Two ways we help

A product, and a practice.

Everything above is why economAIcs exists. It reaches the sector two ways: software organisations run themselves, and a consulting arm built at the join of AI and public transport.

The Brain, our product

Bid intelligence operators and consultancies run themselves: your own AI, trained on your own bids, and built for the UK Procurement Act 2023.

Explore the Brain

The Practice, our consulting arm

Win the bid, or adopt AI: fixed-scope advisory powered by our own transport-trained AI, with build and run delivery for operators, and published independence rules for authorities.

Explore The Practice

How we work

Four principles. Non-negotiable.

  • We build bespoke

    Every bid team is different. Generic tools produce generic results. We build personalised bid intelligence that fits your operation exactly: your bid history, your authorities, your evaluators.

  • We live on outcomes

    We do not sell seats or dashboards. We sell a measurable improvement in bid-strength, with stated error bars on every output, and a Cost Truth Line on every invoice.

  • AI as the operating model

    Not AI bolted on, not AI as a feature. AI as the operating model, with humans in the loop on every judgement that matters. Audit-grade by default, every retrieval logged, no hallucinations.

  • We respect your data

    Your bid history is your most valuable commercial asset. Zero model training on your documents, ever. Brain Portability guaranteed in the terms.

Who we work with

Operators, vendors and consultancies bidding on five or more tenders a year.

Sectors

  • Bus
  • Coach
  • Rail
  • Ferry
  • Light rail and trams
  • Transport tech
  • Specialist advisory

Scale

  • Single operators £5m to £25m
  • Multi-operator groups £25m to £100m
  • PLC and national scale
  • Solo bid practices
  • Mid-market consultancies
  • Tier-1 scale

Read this far? Take the diagnostic.

Nine questions, a few minutes, a personalised read of where AI fits your organisation on screen the moment you finish. Free. Or book a walkthrough and we bring your live tender data.

Run the diagnostic Book a walkthrough