Find the gaps before the bidders do.
Every ambiguity you close before advertisement is a change order nobody ever writes. We read your set the way a contractor’s estimator will, and hand you the list while there is still time to reissue.
Massachusetts public work — DCAMM, MSBA, municipal and district projects
Eight ways a bid set costs you money after award…
The same eight checks either way, read from your side of the table. A contractor looks for these to price them. You want them gone.
Owner document readiness
Whether the package is fit to go to market at all. Missing sections, an unreissued spec index, an addendum that moved the drawings but not the schedule — the things that draw a bidder question the day after you advertise.
Change-order prediction
Where the added cost will originate: deferred scope, concealed conditions, and the clauses a contractor will read as an invitation. Every one you close now is one you are not negotiating at 40 percent complete.
Biddability
Can this set be bid consistently and fairly? Where the language is too loose to price, every bidder guesses differently — and the spread in your bid tab is not competition, it is confusion.
Claims
Where disputes arise, and which of them you can head off before bid rather than argue about after award. The clause that decides a fight is usually written long before anybody is fighting.
Constructability
Whether it can actually be built efficiently: diagrammatic drawings, constrained existing space, and trades routed into each other. What is unbuildable as drawn comes back as an RFI, then as a change order.
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 promise.
Extended general conditions
What a delay actually costs, sized from the project's own measured rates rather than a rule of thumb — so you know the exposure before you grant the first time extension.
Financial
What the open risks are worth, always quoted as a range, so you can close them or fund them deliberately instead of carrying them into a contract blind.
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 how the contract is administered once it is signed.
Document errors with no cost impact
Mistakes in the set that cost nothing to correct but cost a bidder 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 designer would not have caught it in a normal back-check. We do not bill you for what your own review already found.
Everything else is suppressed. We would rather send you four findings you act on than forty you scroll past.
Three steps, before you advertise.
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01
Send us the set
Drawings, project manual, front-end documents — 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 entire package 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 reissue, or you do not
Each finding cited to the page, sorted into its category, with what it will cost you if it goes out as written. Fix what is worth fixing, addend what is not, and know what you are carrying on the rest.
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.
Every item you close before advertisement is a change order nobody writes, negotiates or pays for — and the cheapest time to close it is now.
On one school renovation set we read this summer — 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 ready to advertise. | Basic$495/setSee everything we found, and where it is. | Full$995/setFix it before advertisement, not in a change order. | |
|---|---|---|---|
| The verdict | |||
| A verdict on whether the set is ready to advertise | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| How many material findings the set carries | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| What the change-order exposure is worth across the set | Wide range | Exact range | Exact range |
| The findings | |||
| Every finding named and cited to the drawing and spec section | – | ✓ | ✓ |
| What each one costs you if it goes out as written | – | ✓ | ✓ |
| 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 | |||
| Addendum-ready replacement language, clause by clause | – | – | ✓ |
| Which items to reissue, and which to accept and fund | – | – | ✓ |
| Massachusetts c.149 front-end document check | – | – | ✓ |
| A re-read after your addendum, at no extra charge | – | – | ✓ |
| 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? A set still in design at 60 or 90 percent is a design-stage review, priced hourly rather than per set. A contractor pricing a set that is already out to bid reads the same documents from the other side of the table.
Start with the free report.
Send us the set you are about to advertise 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.