Writing your technical bid with ChatGPT: what works, what is missing

Many companies already write their technical bid with ChatGPT, Claude or another assistant. It is a good idea for part of the work, and a bad one for another part. A general-purpose assistant writes fast and cleanly; it knows neither this tender, nor your company, nor the country, and what it does not know it invents with confidence. This article says what it does well, how to ask it, what to check before submitting, and what no assistant can know in your place.

What an assistant does well

• The outline. Give it the evaluation grid and it draws up a table of contents that follows the order of the criteria, with the right headings. That is what Write a technical bid that gets through asks for, and it is tedious by hand.
• Shaping your notes. You know how you will run the site; you write it in ten telegraphic lines. It turns them into a readable methodology, in the file's own words.
• Proofreading. Typos, sentences too long, paragraphs that answer nothing. Ask it to read like a committee marker and to say which criterion each section serves.
• Translation and consistency. A file in English, a bid in French; a CV that says one thing and the schedule another. It spots them.
• Checklists. "List everything this file asks to be attached" on a text you paste gives a first list, to be checked.

Give it the file, not a summary

The quality of the answer depends on what you put in the question. An assistant that only has "write a technical bid for a school construction contract" produces a generic text, the one all your competitors get too. What it needs:

1. 1

   The evaluation criteria, word for word

   Copy the "evaluation" section of the tender file, with the marks given to each criterion and the eliminatory criteria. Ask for an outline that follows that order and gives more room to the criteria that weigh most.

2. 2

   The exact tender

   The buyer, its exact name, the notice reference, the lot you are answering, the location, the execution period. Without them, the assistant writes "the contracting authority" and "the project", and you forget to replace them.

3. 3

   Your real references

   For each similar contract: client, subject, amount, year, your role, and the proof you will attach. Give them as a list; the assistant shapes them. Never ask it to "suggest" some.

4. 4

   Your staff and equipment

   The people actually available, their training and years of experience, the equipment you own or rent. Same rule: it shapes what you give it.

5. 5

   An instruction against invention

   End with: "Do not invent any reference, figure or article of law. When a piece of information is missing, write [TO COMPLETE: what is missing]." You will then know what to look for in the text.

An example request, to adapt:

Here is the evaluation grid of a tender from [buyer], reference [reference], lot [lot]: [paste the grid]. Here are my references: [list]. Here are my staff and equipment: [list]. Write the technical bid following the order of the grid, using its words. Do not invent any reference, figure or article of law. When a piece of information is missing, write [TO COMPLETE: what is missing].

What to check before submitting

These are the mistakes we see coming back in bids written with an assistant. Each one can eliminate.

• Invented references. If you gave no reference, and sometimes even if you did, the assistant may add a plausible one: a client that exists, a contract that never happened. A committee can call the client. Re-read each reference against your certificates of good execution.
• Bond amounts. The assistant "knows" that the bid bond is a fraction of the contract amount and offers a figure. The only amount that counts is the one the tender file sets, or, if it does not set one, your country's rule: see Bonds and guarantees. Do not copy a figure you have not read in the file.
• Articles of the procurement code. It readily cites "article 43 of the public procurement code". The number is often another country's, or from a repealed version of the text. Only cite an article you have opened; your country's rules give the texts in force and their source.
• The buyer's name and the reference. Check the first page, the header, the submission letter and the conclusion: an approximate buyer name or a truncated reference casts doubt on everything else, and the name of another tender, left over from a previous bid, can get the bid rejected.
• Dates and periods. The execution period you announce must be the file's or better; the assistant readily rounds. Check the schedule against the period asked for.
• Forms. A submission letter or sworn statement "written" by the assistant has no value if the file provides a template. Fill in the file's template, without changing a word.
• Text that is not about this tender. If a paragraph could be pasted as is into another bid, it earns nothing. Look for the name of the site, the difficulties you saw on the spot, how you deal with them.
• The [TO COMPLETE] markers. Search for all of them in the final file. A single one left, printed on page 14, is enough to show the marker how the bid was written.

What a general-purpose assistant cannot know

Even well briefed, it starts from a blank page every time, and it knows nothing that is not in your question:

• This tender's file. The required documents, with the page where they are required, the addenda published since, the letter template to use. You have to paste them in, and it cannot check that your copy is complete.
• Your documents and their dates. It does not know that your tax certificate expires before the deadline, or that your trade register is in the former company's name.
• What happens at this buyer. Who won its last contracts, at what price, against how many competitors. That decides the price and the effort to put into the bid, and no assistant has it.
• The deadline, the place of submission and the opening time. It will remind you of nothing the day before. Close the tab and it has forgotten the tender.
• Your country's rules. Appeal time limits, national preference, procedure thresholds differ from one country to the next and change with the texts; its version is often another country's or another year's.

None of this stops you using an assistant to write. It means that the work that decides whether the bid is rejected or admissible, the documents, the dates, the amounts, still has to be done elsewhere.

What the SangoBids submission file adds

The submission file does not write your bid for you. It does the other part of the work, the one an assistant cannot do: for every tender you track, it reads the tender file and draws up the list of required documents, quoted with their page; it compares them with your documents and tells you what is ready, what expires before the deadline and what is missing; it reminds you of what is missing three days and one day before the deadline; it tells you where and when to submit.

Its technical proposal follows the rule of this article: a first text from the notice and its documents, a review that lists the blocking points first, rewrites you keep or refuse, and nothing invented, the gaps staying marked "[TO COMPLETE]". One proposal is free to try. The details are in Prepare your submission file.

What next

Whatever the tool, the substance of the bid is the same: Write a technical bid that gets through. And the day before submission, re-read The mistakes that eliminate you: most are not about the text, but about the documents.