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Scenario: tender research for a construction firm
An illustrative scenario shows how a construction firm can structure tender research, deadline checks and opportunity selection.
Auftrag One Team··5 min read
The starting situation: A common mid-market challenge
Many mid-sized construction companies face the same challenge: contract volume depends on how quickly and thoroughly they find relevant tenders. In practice, that means spending hours searching procurement portals, a task that consumes valuable capacity and offers no guarantee of complete market coverage.
This illustrative scenario follows a fictional general contractor in southern Germany. It presents possible working steps, not the experience of a named customer. All figures are example assumptions for discussion only.
The challenge
The company depended on public contracts, they made up roughly 70% of total revenue. Tender research was handled by an experienced project manager who manually searched 15 different procurement platforms each week: state portals, municipal platforms, TED, service.bund.de and various regional procurement marketplaces.
The problems were typical for the industry:
- Time investment: 8 hours per week on research, a full working day lost to bid preparation and estimation
- Incomplete coverage: Despite the effort, tenders slipped through the net. Some portals were only checked every two weeks due to time constraints
- Missed deadlines: Relevant tenders were sometimes discovered so late that the bid deadline couldn't be met
- Inconsistent terminology: Construction companies search for "structural concrete work", but contracting authorities write "execution of building structure in solid construction". Keyword searches don't match these
The project manager estimated that the company missed 5-8 relevant tenders monthly simply due to incomplete research.
The solution
The company decided to automate tender research with Auftrag One. Setup took less than an hour:
Step 1: Create company profile. Service areas (structural work, underground construction, renovation, demolition), regional focus (Bavaria and neighboring states), preferred contract sizes (€200,000 to €5 million) and references were recorded.
Step 2: Activate AI matching. The AI search analyzes over 150,000 tenders daily from all relevant sources and automatically matches them to the company profile. Each tender gets a relevance score.
Step 3: Set up daily alerts. Instead of searching, the project manager receives a curated list each morning of the most relevant new tenders, sorted by relevance, with deadline overview and key data.
Illustrative team question: How should we assess notices when buyers use different language for our services?
Possible observations in the scenario
After the first quarter, the company took stock. The numbers spoke clearly:
Time savings
| Before | After | Savings |
|---|---|---|
| 8 hours/week research | 1.5 hours/week review | 6.5 hours/week |
| 1 full work day | 20 minutes daily | 340 hours/year |
The gained time flowed directly into bid preparation. The project manager could focus on estimation and bid quality instead of portal searching.
More relevant tenders
- +40% more relevant hits compared to manual search
- 12-15 additional tenders per month that previously went unnoticed
- Especially tenders with unusual terminology or on rarely-checked platforms
Higher contract intake
- 3 additional contracts in the first quarter not discovered without AI-powered research
- Total volume of new contracts: approximately €1.2 million
- Win rate remained stable at 22%, but the number of submitted bids rose due to larger tender pool
Fewer missed deadlines
- Zero missed deadlines since transition, previously averaged 2 per month
- Automatic deadline management eliminated separate calendar maintenance
What made the difference
Three factors were critical to success:
1. Semantic matching instead of keyword search. The AI understands that "construction of an extension building for a primary school" is relevant for a general contractor, even when none of the usual search terms appear. This solves the core problem of manual portal searching.
2. Complete source coverage. Instead of manually searching 15 portals, Auftrag One aggregates all relevant procurement sources in one place. No tender gets missed because a platform wasn't checked due to time constraints.
3. Award data for better bids. Through the procurement network, the company learned which competitors regularly won contracts in specific areas. This helped with realistic assessment of their own chances and pricing.
Conclusion
The scenario highlights questions a construction firm can address in its own process: which sources are missing, how deadlines are checked, and which notices genuinely match its delivery profile.
The investment in a professional research tool typically pays for itself with the first additional contract. For a construction company with average contract volume of €400,000, this is offset by an annual fee representing a fraction of that value.
Want to experience how many relevant tenders you're currently missing? Test Auftrag One free for 30 days. No credit card required. Setup takes less than an hour, and you'll immediately see what the AI finds for your service profile. All package details are on our Pricing page.
This scenario is fictional and for illustration only. Its figures, tables and statements are example assumptions, not customer outcomes or testimonials.