Bid leveling shouldn't cost you the scope you didn't catch.
Keystone is the Quote Intelligence module of a larger pre-construction platform. It reads subcontractor bids, catches what quietly went missing, and shows you the real cheapest bid — with proof, not just a headline number.
The problem, today
Levelling one trade package by hand — reading every bidder's PDF and re-keying it into a spreadsheet — takes an estimator 2 to 4 hours. A typical project has 30 or more packages, which means 150+ documents read manually, often under bid-day deadline pressure.
The expensive part isn't the time — it's what gets missed. A subcontractor can bury an exclusion in a line like “controls by others”, so the cheapest number on paper isn't always the cheapest bid. In one real case, a $2M mechanical bid was awarded on lowest price — and silently excluded $150,000 of insulation and $75,000 of controls. The $225,000 gap wasn't discovered until after the contract was signed.
How Keystone solves it
- 01
Upload
Drop every subcontractor quote for a package — PDF, scanned, or photographed. Keystone doesn't need a clean digital file to start.
- 02
Extract & flag
Line items, prices, and scope get pulled out automatically, each tied back to the exact page it came from. Anything the system isn't confident about is flagged — never silently guessed.
- 03
You confirm
A flagged field can't enter the comparison until a human has checked it against the source page. Keystone never overrides your judgment — it just makes sure nothing slips through unchecked.
- 04
Award with proof
The comparison table shows the true cheapest bid once every silently excluded scope is counted — with the reasoning spelled out, not just a number.
What makes this different from a spreadsheet
Every number Keystone shows carries where it came from and how sure the system is about it. Nothing is filled in silently — a missing price stays visibly missing until a human confirms it. The point isn't to replace the estimator's judgment; it's to make sure nothing gets past it.