Guide · Insight
How to choose AI bid software for transport
By Ben Ross, 500+ tenders bid, £250m+ won, now building economAIcs.
The same conversation is occurring across the transport sector right now: ‘we should be using AI for bids.’ Usually triggered by a lost tender, a burned out bid team, or a board member who’s seen a demo. Then someone googles “AI bid software” and drowns, writing tools, workflow platforms, chatbots, all claiming to win you more work.
I’ve sat on your side of this for two decades. It wasn’t long ago where I conducted a full bid tool analysis, took demo’s with multiple suppliers, genuinely looking for a tool that could improve the business. I kept coming back to the same point, the tools were generic, and transport is hyper specific. Here’s how I’d cut through it if I were still there, including, honestly, when I wouldn’t buy what we build.
First, know which problem you actually have
“AI for bids” is four different products wearing one label. Which pain is yours?
Writing capacity. Your answers are good but slow; the team drowns in prose production. That’s what writing engines like AutogenAI are built for, drafting horsepower across any sector. How we compare →
Coordination chaos. Requirements in spreadsheets, SME input by email, version confusion at 11pm. That’s workflow software, platforms like Altura at the complex-enterprise end and BidScript for mid-market teams do this well. Altura comparison → · BidScript comparison →
Decision quality. You bid too much, qualify by gut, and find out at award what you should have known at go/no-go. That’s tender intelligence, scored bid/no-bid verdicts, evidence-cited answers, sector calibration. That’s the ground we build on.
Budget zero. Someone’s already pasting tender questions into ChatGPT. Fine for brainstorming; dangerous for submissions (and your data…). Why →
Most vendors will happily sell you their product for all four problems. They’re not lying, exactly. They’re generalising. Which brings me to the questions.
The five questions I’d ask in every demo
1. “Show me a number in your output. Where did it come from?” The most important question in transport bidding. If the answer isn’t a citation to a source document, yours or the tender’s, you’re looking at generated plausibility. Ask what happens when the system doesn’t know a figure. The right answer is “it flags it for a human.” The wrong answer is fluent prose.
2. “What do you know about my sector that I’d have to teach a generalist?” Ask them to explain BSIP funding logic, or what a franchising authority weights in evaluation, or why dead mileage assumptions sink bids. Watch for the pause. Sector knowledge isn’t a filter setting, either it’s in the product or it isn’t.
3. “Walk me through your bid/no-bid output. Would my board sign it?” Most tools give you a summary and call it qualification. Some give you a fit percentage with no visible workings, I’d trust that less than a summary. What you want: a verdict with drivers, evidence and a recommendation you could defend to a board. If the win-probability number has no published methodology, treat it as decoration.
4. “What does it cost and why won’t you tell me on your website?” Try finding a price on most bid software sites. Tier names, seat types, “book a scoping call” and budget quietly top of their scoping factors. There are honest reasons for scoped pricing, but as a buyer I always read hidden prices the same way: the price is whatever they think you’ll pay. Ask what drives the number, and whether it’s anchored to your value or their discovery of your budget.
5. “What happens to my data and does my bid history make your other customers smarter?” Two dealbreakers hiding in one question: whether your submissions train anything shared, and where your data lives. In a sector this small, your win themes leaking into a competitor’s draft isn’t paranoia, it’s a procurement risk you’re accountable for.
The red flags, compressed
A win-percentage with no methodology. A “sector page” that’s SEO rather than substance, check whether their sector knowledge survives question 2. Pricing that starts with your budget. Case-study claims with no named mechanism. And any vendor who can’t tell you, plainly, when not to buy their product.
When not to buy ours
Fair’s fair. If you bid across six sectors and transport is a sideline, a generalist platform serves you better, we’re deliberately narrow. If your only pain is prose speed and your qualification discipline is already sharp, a writing engine is cheaper. And if you bid twice a year for small-value work, a careful human with ChatGPT and a strong review process may be enough, just keep the numbers human-verified.
But if transport tendering is your business, if your year is shaped by franchising rounds, DfT frameworks and BSIP money, and a wrong number in a submission is an existential risk rather than an embarrassment, then you need the sector in the software. That’s the whole reason we built economAIcs the way we did: scored verdicts before you commit resources, every claim cited, every figure through a Truth Gate calibrated to transport, priced on the website like we’ve got nothing to hide.
Start where our own customers start: the free Bid Mechanics Diagnostic, nine questions, and you’ll know where your bid process leaks before any vendor conversation, including ours. Or book a walkthrough on a live tender and judge us by question 1.