The change orders are already in the documents.
Every public bid set carries scope nobody priced and conditions nobody surveyed. We audit the whole set at every step of the bid cycle and on into construction. We flag the risks that decide your margin.
Massachusetts public work — DCAMM, MSBA, municipal and district projects
Eight places the money moves after award…
Every report checks all eight — and says, for each finding, whether it lands on you or on the owner.
Biddability
Can this set be bid consistently? Where the language is too loose to price, every bidder guesses — and the ones who guess high lose the job. Knowing exactly where the looseness sits lets you bid the documents as written instead of padding blind.
Schedule
Is the work realistic within the contract time? Long-lead items, phasing through an occupied building, and whether the calendar was drawn from the work or from a deadline.
Extended general conditions
What a delay actually costs you, sized from the project's own measured rates rather than a rule of thumb.
Change-order prediction
Where the added cost will originate: deferred scope, concealed conditions, and the clauses that decide who pays for them. Work that is genuinely outside the documents is not your exposure — it is a change order, and you want it identified before you set your number rather than discovered at 40 percent complete.
Claims
Where disputes arise, which way the contract points when they do, and what your record needs to look like from day one if you intend to be paid.
Constructability
Whether it can actually be built efficiently: diagrammatic drawings, constrained existing space, and trades routed into each other.
Financial
What the hidden risks are worth, always quoted as a range, so you can price them or clarify them instead of carrying them blind.
Owner document readiness
Whether the package was fit to go to market at all — and what that tells you about the job to come. A set that was rushed out the door is usually administered the same way.
Three categories, severity ranked within each.
There is no score. Each finding is named, cited to the page it came from, and sorted into one of three categories, so you can work the list in the order it costs you money rather than in the order we happened to read the set.
Contract, commercial and administrative
The bid procedure, the contract terms and the front-end documents — what governs the award, and what you are agreeing to administer once you sign.
Document errors with no cost impact
Mistakes in the set that cost nothing to build but cost you time to resolve: a stale index, a wrong sheet reference, a section that contradicts its own title.
Cost, procurement, schedule and scope
Anything that moves money, the calendar, the scope or the way the work is procured. This is where the exposure sits, and each item carries its own range.
A finding only reaches your report if it clears all three.
Cited to a page. If we cannot point at it in your documents, it does not ship.
It moves money or time. Interesting is not the bar; expensive is.
Your estimator would not have caught it in a normal read. We do not bill you for what you already know.
Everything else is suppressed. We would rather send you four findings you act on than forty you scroll past.
Three steps.
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01
Send us the bid set
Plans, specifications, addenda — however you have them. Drag the folder into the portal. No formatting, no file naming, nothing to learn. Large sets upload in pieces and resume if your connection drops. We count the drawings and the specification pages as they land, so the price is on screen before you commit to anything.
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02
We audit the whole set with Nemesis™
Every drawing against every specification section, the front-end documents against both, and each addendum against what it was meant to change. Nemesis™, our own software, reads the whole set across all eight checks above — then a person clears every candidate finding against the real / material / non-obvious standard before it reaches you.
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03
You get the findings and the moves
A short cited report: what we found, where it is in the documents, what it is worth, and — finding by finding — whether to price it, ask about it, or leave it alone.
Pythagoras provides construction document analysis and risk identification. We do not provide legal advice, and we are not the engineer or architect of record for any project. Accessibility findings are reported against ADA / 521 CMR; design decisions remain with the licensed professional who made them.
One price per bid set. No subscription.
One price per set, whatever the job is worth. What you get back is every finding that clears the bar, each cited to a page, each with what it is worth and whether it is yours to carry.
On one school renovation set — base bid $1,794,550 — five findings cleared the bar and carried a predictable exposure of $365,000 to $630,000. That is one set, not an average.
| First passFreeSee whether this set is worth bidding. | Basic$495/setSee everything we found, and where it is. | Full$995/setBid the documents as written, and know what is coming. | |
|---|---|---|---|
| The verdict | |||
| A verdict on whether the set can be bid consistently | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| How many material findings the set carries | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| What the open risk is worth across the set | Wide range | Exact range | Exact range |
| The findings | |||
| Every finding named and cited to the drawing and spec section | – | ✓ | ✓ |
| Whether each one is yours to carry or theirs to pay for | – | ✓ | ✓ |
| Sorted into the three categories, severity ranked within each | – | ✓ | ✓ |
| Accessibility review against ADA / 521 CMR | – | ✓ | ✓ |
| A dollar range on each individual finding | – | – | ✓ |
| What to do about it | |||
| Pre-bid RFI package, written and ready to submit as-is | – | – | ✓ |
| Which RFIs to file, and which to leave alone | – | – | ✓ |
| Massachusetts c.149 bid-clarification check | – | – | ✓ |
| Turnaround | Under an hour | 24 hours | 24–48 hours |
| Start free | Choose Basic | Choose Full | |
Bigger sets
| Up to 100 drawings / 1,000 specification pages | Included |
| 101–150 drawings, or 1,001–1,500 specification pages | + one tier |
| 151–200 drawings, or 1,501–2,000 specification pages | + two tiers |
| Each further band | + one tier |
We count the set when you upload it and the price is on screen before you commit. When the drawings and the specifications are both oversized, only the larger of the two is charged.
You create an account once and it stays. Every bid set after that is priced on its own — there is nothing to cancel, and nothing renews.
Not the right door? An owner or OPM wants these findings before the set is advertised, while a correction still costs an addendum. A set still in design at 60 or 90 percent is a design-stage review, priced hourly rather than per set.
Start with the free report.
Send us your next set through the Pythagoras Construction Analytics portal and we will tell you what is in it. Nothing to install, no password to keep — you sign in with a one-time code sent to your work email.