One invitation comes in, one civil set gets read, and every item that could cost you money comes back with the sheet it came off — before you spend an hour on takeoff.
This is the email an estimator gets forty times a week — buried in a thread, half the facts in prose. Keybid pulls out who is asking, what it is worth, and when it is actually due.
Summit Builders is soliciting subcontractor proposals for the Sitework / Earthwork package on Sunset Ridge Medical Campus — Phase 1. Bids are due Friday, September 12 at 2:00 PM local time. Estimated value of this package: $520,000. Prevailing wage project — certified payroll required weekly. Plans and specifications are available on the project FTP. Please confirm bid/no-bid by Wednesday. Dana Whitfield Preconstruction Manager Summit Builders
Keybid reads the sheet index, names every sheet, and marks the ones that touch your trade — here, Excavation & Grading. No manual sheet log, no scrolling a 200-page PDF looking for the grading plan.
KeybidC000 COVER SHEET & SHEET INDEX
C100 SITE PLAN
C110 HORIZONTAL CONTROL PLAN
C200 DEMOLITION PLAN
C300 GRADING PLAN
C310 DRAINAGE PLAN
C400 UTILITY PLAN
C501 SITE DETAILS
| Qty | Unit | Where it came from |
|---|---|---|
| 12,400 | CY | Cut per the earthwork summary on C300 GRADING PLAN |
| 8,900 | CY | Fill per the earthwork summary on C300 GRADING PLAN |
| 1,840 | LF | 18" RCP storm drain, C310 DRAINAGE PLAN |
| 13 | IN | Type II aggregate base under the heavy-duty section, C501 SITE DETAILS |
Keybid copies numbers that appear as text next to scope words and tells you which sheet each one came off. It does not measure areas or compute cut and fill — that is still your takeoff, and this is the head start.
The same flags, grouped the way an estimator actually triages a set: what could cost you money, what speeds the bid up, what keeps the crew safe. Every single one cites the sheet it came off, so you can go verify it yourself in ninety seconds.
A plan read that sits in a folder is a PDF with extra steps. From here Keybid keeps working the bid — and everything that goes out in your name waits for your tap first.
Addendum No. 2 arrives from Summit Builders and Keybid attaches it to the Sunset Ridge card instead of a fresh one. If the addendum moves the deadline, the due date and the due time move with it and the change is written to the feed — so the countdown is against the real date, not the one from three weeks ago.
Keybid writes the follow-up to Dana — the right one for where the bid is — and puts it in front of you as a draft. You approve every word before anything sends. No email leaves in your name on its own.
2:00 PM Friday is tracked from the moment the card is created. The bid surfaces as the window narrows, so a job you priced right does not die because it was remembered at 2:40.
Keybid reads the text layer of a PDF. If a sheet is a scan, a photograph, or an image with the words baked into the picture, there is no text layer and Keybid reads nothing off that sheet — we do not run OCR today, and a set with no extractable text is refused with a message telling you so. There is a cap on how much of a set we read, so an enormous submittal package will not be read cover to cover. Quantities are copied, not measured: Keybid pulls numbers that appear as text near scope words, and it does not measure areas, compute cut and fill, or check that a number it copied is the right number for your scope. And every single thing Keybid produces — every flag, every quantity, every drafted email — is a draft for a human to check. It is not a takeoff, not an estimate, and not professional advice. The full version of this lives in our Terms of Service.
We would rather you find that out on a marketing page than at 1:45 on a Friday.
Fourteen days free, no card. Upload one plan set and see your trade's sheets, your quantities and your audit — cited, the same way.