Chasing subcontractor quotes for every bid at a 10-to-500-person contractor: about 4 hours a bid, and the price rides on it

For the executive who decides

• The customer acts
• The machine acts
• A person decides
• Nothing runs

An illustration built from two contractors' postings and trade figures: the times are examples, and the hours, calls and job size are estimates.

1The job

Assembling the subcontractor and supplier side of a construction bid: inviting subs and suppliers to price each trade, tracking who is bidding and what they quoted, and chasing until every trade has a real number before the bid is due. The reader: a contractor of 10 to 500 people that bids for its work. The evidence that the work is paid for: a mechanical and plumbing contractor, about 100 years old and employee-owned, is hiring a full-time bid coordinator for one of its divisions (posted 25 September 2026). Its total size is not stated and may be over 500. A general contractor of about 51 to 100 people posted the same job this year.

2The number today

Support subcontractor/vendor outreach by issuing bid invitations, tracking quotes, and following up to ensure timely coverage. Also in the same posting: Track RFIs, addenda, and key deadlines to ensure timely communication and complete bid packages. That is one of ten duties in a full-time job paying $25 to $35 an hour ($52,000 to $72,800 a year). A general contractor of about 51 to 100 people told its bid coordinator to expect "forty calls or more per day during busy season".

At 40 calls of 3 minutes, that is 2 hours a day, 500 hours a year: about $12,500 a year at the posted low pay. Add an hour of the estimator's time on each bid day phoning for missing numbers, at US median pay for cost estimators ($37.86 an hour): about $5,000 more. About $17,500 a year, or about $130 a bid at 11 bids a month.

The bigger number is the bid itself. Trade press reports that "arriving on bid day with zero responses on a trade line is not uncommon". Then the estimator guesses. On a $250,000 job at a 16% gross margin, about $40,000 of gross profit rides on that guess.

Estimate. The 2 hours a day assume 3 minutes a call; the 11 bids a month and 4 hours a bid assume 10 trades, 6 invitations a trade and about 75 calls; the $40,000 assumes a $250,000 job at a 16% margin (2024 benchmark). The contractor's own bid log replaces all of them.

3The verdict

Hand over the chasing. Keep the price.

• Hand to the machine: sending each trade's invitation to the subs the estimator picked, from the estimator's own email; logging every answer; reminding the silent subs twice and stopping at "not bidding"; telling every bidder about new drawings; reading each quote as it lands and flagging what it leaves out; and showing, 48 hours before the deadline, which trades are short and who has not answered.
• Keep with a person: who gets invited; the phone call to the subs that matter on a short trade; which quote to carry and what its gaps cost; any guessed number; and the final price.
• Not yet: inviting new subs on its own to fill a short trade; telling a sub their number is high; filling a missing trade with a number of its own; sending the bid.

What the estimator is for now: knowing which subs will show up with a real number, and deciding the price. The machine does the sending, the logging and the reminding. The coordinator's calls go to the trades that need a person.

4The bill

About $150 a month, with a bid tool that writes each trade's invitation, sends it from the estimator's own email and tracks coverage (from $149 a month for the whole company). The platforms many contractors already pay for send the invitations, but their chasing is still a person writing messages; one lists from $3,600 a year, another from $600 a user a month, and one is free for contractors that invite bids, with paid tiers unpriced. Building it is about $10 a month in model use plus 20 to 50 euros for the software that runs the steps, and then the build and the upkeep. People: a part-time remote assistant is about $1,080 a month (20 hours a week) plus a recruiting fee; the chasing share of a coordinator at the posted low pay is about $1,040 a month. Checking: for the first four bids, the estimator approves every invitation list, and the coordinator checks every logged quote against the sub's own document. After that, the check time is not known until it is counted.

Estimate. The build cost assumes 11 bids a month, 60 invitations a bid; the $1,040 assumes 500 hours a year at $25.

5Owner and off switch

The chief estimator owns it, because every price the company sends rests on these quotes. The off switch: turn the reminders off in the bid tool's settings, or pause the workflow if it is built. Invitations already sent stay sent; the coordinator logs and phones by hand, as today. It takes under a minute. Try it once on the first bid.

6The brief to hand your builder

The job: for every bid we pursue, send each trade's invitation to the subs we pick, log every answer, remind the silent ones, read each quote against the scope, and show us 48 hours before the deadline which trades are short.

Today: a coordinator sends invitations, logs answers by hand and makes up to 40 calls a day in busy season. Trades still come in with no number, and the estimator guesses.

Done when: for two weeks, every invitation goes only to the list the estimator approved; every answer and quote is logged within an hour of arriving; no sub gets more than two reminders; every short trade is flagged at least 48 hours out; the coordinator's chasing time a bid is under half of the baseline; and the estimator corrects fewer than 1 in 20 logged quotes.

It may never, on its own: invite a sub we did not approve; tell a sub where their number stands; put a number on a trade; or submit anything.

You get from us: our sub list by trade, with who we trust; the scope sheets for two recent bids; the quotes we got on them, messy ones included; access to the estimator's mailbox and our bid platform.

We own: the sub list, the mailbox, the bid platform account and the billing.

We get back: each morning, for every open bid, each trade's count of subs bidding, silent and declined; every quote with its exclusions; and the list of trades short of three numbers.

Ask whoever sets it up	A good answer	A bad answer
Who gets the invitation, and who decides?	Only the subs your estimator approves, about six a trade, from your own email	"We send it to every sub in your area from our database"
What does the reminder look like, and how many go out?	Two at most, from the estimator's address, naming the job and the scope; they stop at "not bidding"	"Daily reminders until they bid," from a no-reply address
What happens when a trade is still short two days out?	It names the trade and the silent subs to your estimator, who calls. It never puts in a number	"It fills the gap with an average price"

For the operator who builds and runs it Paid layer

7The working set

• Trigger: the estimator marks a bid "go", with the due date, the trade list and a scope sheet for each trade.
• Steps: build each trade's invite list from the approved sub list (about 6, capped); the estimator approves the list, not each email; draft one invitation per trade from its scope sheet; send from the estimator's own mailbox; log each reply as bidding, not bidding, question or silent; send questions to the estimator as RFIs; remind silent subs on day 2 and day 5 only; send every bidder a notice when drawings or addenda change (the platform does not do this on its own); read each quote on arrival for price, scope included, exclusions and valid-until date, against the scope sheet; keep a coverage board per trade against a floor of three responsive bids; 48 hours out, flag short trades to the estimator with the silent subs' names and phone numbers; after award, send the result to every bidder.
• Data: one record per invitation: bid, trade, sub, contact, date sent, answer, reminders sent, quote received at, amount, scope included, exclusions, valid until, status (logged, checked, corrected, carried), and who checked it.
• Review step: the estimator approves each trade's invite list and reads every quote before it is carried. For the first four bids the coordinator checks every logged quote against the PDF; after that, 10 a week.
• Alerts: a trade under three responsive bids at 48 hours; a quote with exclusions the scope sheet does not allow; a sub's question; a bounced email; a sub who has ignored five invitations in a row; and the wrong-but-green count, the logged quotes the estimator corrected.
• If it breaks: what you see: subs say they never got the invitation, replies are not logged, or a sub gets the same reminder twice. Check first: the mailbox connection is still authorized; the estimator's address is not landing in spam; the sub's contact is current. Safe fix: turn the reminders off; the coordinator sends and logs by hand, as today.
• Cost per bid: about $13 with the bid tool ($149 a month over 11 bids); about $1 in model use if built (Claude Sonnet 5.5), plus the workflow runner, about 50 euros a month at this volume.
• Baseline, before switch-on: the next four bids, by hand: invitations sent per trade, answers before any call, calls made, the coordinator's minutes chasing (time it, do not ask), responsive bids per trade at the deadline, and the number of trades carried on a guessed number.

Estimate. The cost per bid assumes 11 bids a month, 10 trades and 60 invitations a bid. The baseline replaces all three.

Tools by name: Downtobid (from $149 a month per company for GCs; AI-written scopes and invitations sent from the estimator's email); BuildingConnected Pro (no published price; Capterra lists from $3,600 a year; sends invites on publish, reminders are manual messages); SmartBid (Capterra lists from $600 a user a month); PlanHub (free Essentials for GCs; paid tiers and its Virtual Bid Coordinator add-on unpriced); Virtual Construction Assistants ($250 a week part-time, $400 full-time, plus a recruitment fee); built: the estimator's Microsoft 365 or Google mailbox, Claude Sonnet 5.5 ($2 per million tokens in, $10 out), n8n (Starter 20 euros, Pro 50 euros a month, billed annually).