If my prediction from yesterday is partly true—that with the help of AI, A/E/C companies (and other public bid companies) will begin to send out a LOT more responses to RFPs and RFQs—then something else is true as well:
Public clients will receive a deluge of responses to publicly bid projects.
As much as they may welcome the attention, no one wants to review 25 proposals. Do the math: 25 50-page proposals comes out to a whopping 1,250 pages. Even skimming that many pages is a serious lift.
What will public clients do?
I can see a few responses to the deluge:
Public clients will have more mandatory in-person pre-bid meetings.
This is the easy button: make bidders show up. It’s a major disincentive to firms that aren’t local.
Public bids will require local presence.
The more serious ask will be to require a local office presence. Some clients already do this—requiring an office location within a 50-mile drive of the project location.
Public bids will be closed to all but a select pre-qualified group.
Again, some clients are already doing this. A limited pool of pre-qualified applicants allows a client to not only limit the number of proposals, but to shorten them.
Taylor Coe 