BidIQ

01 — Business problem

The commercial terms that drive cash flow and risk are easy to miss at bid stage.

Payment terms, retention, performance security, liquidated damages, price escalation and limitation of liability determine a contract’s cash-flow profile, guarantees, delay exposure, price risk and liability.

These terms are spread across clauses, schedules and amendments, and they are reviewed under bid deadlines. A conflicting value, a later addendum or a missing provision can change the commercial position without being noticed.

• Key terms scattered across long documents
• Conflicting values and amendment precedence
• Missing provisions that should be clarified before approval

02 — Why it matters

The cheapest time to address commercial risk is before approval.

Once a bid is submitted or a contract is signed, payment timing, retention, guarantees and penalty exposure are largely fixed. A fast, consistent first-pass review gives commercial, finance and bid teams a clearer basis for clarifications, negotiation and approval.

BidIQ does not give an approve or reject decision. It gives authorised reviewers a faster, traceable starting point.

03 — What I built

A page-referenced commercial review of a contract PDF.

BidIQ reviews a machine-readable contract PDF and produces a page-referenced commercial review: 15 key commercial terms, conflicting or missing provisions, and a rule-based register of bid-stage commercial risks — each with a business implication and a recommended action.

Results are presented in six sections: Executive Review, Commercial Terms, Risk Register, Ask BidIQ (questions answered from the contract’s own evidence), Evidence & Diagnostics, and a management-ready Executive Report PDF.

The 15 commercial terms

• Contract Value
• Contract Duration
• Mobilization Period
• Advance Payment
• Performance Bond
• Payment Terms
• Retention
• Liquidated Damages Rate
• Liquidated Damages Cap
• Warranty / Defects Liability
• Price Escalation
• Insurance
• Termination
• Variations
• Limitation of Liability

04 — How it works

From contract PDF to review-ready findings.

• Read The PDF is read page by page, keeping page numbers for traceability.
• Retrieve Local semantic search finds the evidence for each commercial term.
• Extract An LLM extracts the 15 terms into a validated, structured format.
• Validate Deterministic checks for conflicting values, amendment precedence and missing provisions.
• Assess Six transparent commercial risk rules build the risk register.
• Report An executive review in the application and a management-ready PDF report.

05 — Management questions

Built around the questions asked before a commercial commitment.

1. What are the key commercial terms — and where exactly are they in the document?
2. Which terms conflict, are superseded by an amendment, or are missing?
3. Where are we exposed on payment timing, retention, guarantees, delay damages, price escalation and liability?
4. What should be clarified or actioned before approval?
5. What does the contract actually say on a specific point — and on which page?

07 — Business value

A faster, consistent and traceable first-pass commercial review.

08 — Technology as leverage

The technology serves the finance logic, not the other way round.

• Python
• Shiny for Python
• PyMuPDF
• Local BGE embeddings (fastembed)
• LLM extraction (DeepSeek API)
• Pydantic validation
• ReportLab PDF reporting

Validation: extraction benchmarks on synthetic contracts — 30 of 30 checks (V1) and 59 of 60 checks (V2, also used during tuning, so not an independent hold-out) — plus 58 offline unit and regression tests. Risk ratings are covered by unit tests, not benchmarked.

Scope

• One machine-readable PDF at a time; scanned PDFs are not supported
• No financial calculations — values are shown as stated in the contract
• Risk rules are simple, transparent thresholds from the contractor’s perspective
• Extraction relies on an external LLM, so results can vary between runs