Does it read drawings as well as emails?

It reads the pack: emails, PDFs, specifications, schedules and portal notifications, and pulls measurable scope where the documents allow. Detailed take-off from drawings is a separate workflow and still involves your estimator.

What happens with tender portals rather than email?

Most portals send notification emails, which is enough to trigger the workflow. Where a portal offers an API or document export we integrate directly; where it does not, we trigger on the notification and attach documents at the point a human downloads them.

How quickly does it pay for itself?

For contractors handling 30+ enquiries a month, the recovered response time alone usually shows in the win rate within a quarter. Model it with the ROI calculator before committing.

CONSTRUCTION · SYSTEM

AI tender and enquiry triage for contractors

IN SHORT

An agent reads every incoming tender pack and enquiry, extracts scope, value, trade and return date, scores it against the work you actually want, logs it in your pipeline and sends a same-hour acknowledgement. Estimators only open what is worth pricing.

What it replaces

Most contractors triage tenders by whoever opens the inbox first. Packs sit unread over a weekend, return dates get missed, and the estimator spends the first hour of each day deciding what to ignore. There is rarely a record of what was declined or why, so nobody can see win rate by client, trade or value band.

How the workflow runs

Mail arrives in a monitored inbox. The agent opens attachments — PDFs, drawings, spreadsheets, portal notifications — pulls out the client, scope, value band, site location and return date, and matches it to your qualification rules. Qualified work is created in the pipeline with the documents attached; borderline work is queued for a human decision; junk is archived with a reason logged.

Where humans stay in charge

The agent never declines a tender on your behalf and never sends a price. It drafts the acknowledgement and the bid/no-bid recommendation; a person confirms. Every decision, including automatic archiving, is reversible and logged.

What you get

Same-hour acknowledgement on every enquiry, including out of hours
Scope, value, trade and return date extracted from the pack itself
Bid/no-bid recommendation against your own qualification rules
Full record of declined work, so win rate becomes measurable

Questions we get asked

Does it read drawings as well as emails?: It reads the pack: emails, PDFs, specifications, schedules and portal notifications, and pulls measurable scope where the documents allow. Detailed take-off from drawings is a separate workflow and still involves your estimator.
What happens with tender portals rather than email?: Most portals send notification emails, which is enough to trigger the workflow. Where a portal offers an API or document export we integrate directly; where it does not, we trigger on the notification and attach documents at the point a human downloads them.
How quickly does it pay for itself?: For contractors handling 30+ enquiries a month, the recovered response time alone usually shows in the win rate within a quarter. Model it with the ROI calculator before committing.

Keep reading

TRUST & CREDENTIALS

How we work, and what stands behind it

This page is maintained by Forth Systems. Everything listed below describes our own team, hosting choices and the technologies we build on — it is a statement of practice, not an independent certification or an endorsement by the vendors named.

UK team & data residency

Who builds it, and where your data sits while they do.

UK-based engineers
Edinburgh-headquartered. Every system is designed, built and supported by our own UK-based engineering team — no offshore delivery pool.
UK / EU hosting by default
Applications and databases are provisioned in UK or EU regions unless you require otherwise, with encryption in transit and at rest.
Human-in-the-loop by design
Every AI system we ship keeps a manual override. Nothing irreversible happens without an operator able to review, edit or stop it.
Audit trails as standard
Automated actions are written as first-class records — who or what did it, when, against which input — so operations stay evidence-ready.

Systems we build on

The platforms our systems run on. These are the technologies we deploy and support — not sponsorships or reseller badges.

OpenAI, Anthropic & Google models
Model-agnostic delivery. We route each workload to the model that fits it on cost, latency and accuracy, and can switch without a rebuild.
Supabase & Postgres
Row-level-security Postgres as the operational spine under every platform we run.
Stripe payments
Payment capture, checkout and reconciliation wired directly into job and permit workflows.
Xero, Sage & HubSpot integrations
Production integrations into the finance and CRM systems UK operators already run, so automation lands where the business keeps its records.

Streetworks & industry credentials

Operational domains we build in daily, with the sector systems we integrate against.

DfT Street Manager integration
Our Kerbco permit chain creates and tracks streetworks permit applications against DfT Street Manager and local highway authority processes.
NRSWA-aligned workflows
Permit, reinstatement and traffic-management workflows built to the New Roads and Street Works Act process contractors are inspected against.
Traffic management planning
Roadplan produces signing and guarding layouts for council submission and for the crew installing them on site.
Operator-built, not consultancy-built
We run streetworks and plant operations ourselves. Every platform started as a system we needed in our own business.

Insurance certificates, registration numbers and security documentation are available on request — ask the team.