The pattern: a redrawn spec, a new finish schedule, and a four-day clock
Most Friday afternoon addenda follow the same shape. A redrawn spec section arrives with new keynote notes. A finish schedule is appended. CSI divisions get re-keyed under trades that the original posting never mentioned. The new bid date is set for Monday morning, and the estimator who was planning to log off is the same estimator who is supposed to absorb every change.
Why this quietly doubles scope
Scope that used to live in a 30-page spec book is now spread across the original posting, three addenda and one drawing-revision set. Many of the new items are hidden in plain sight: a sub-floor prep note that wasn't there before, a vapor barrier beneath the new finish, an alternate that becomes the basis for bid. None of those are dramatic individually. Together they add a full CSI division — and that's before the bonding line and the prequal math are recomputed.
The three signals BidVigil reads from each addendum
First, the spec-delta signal: how many new keynote notes, finish-schedule entries or revised CSI lines were added compared to the original posting. Second, the drawing-revision signal: how many sheets were re-issued and how many were new drawings on trades the firm does not currently self-perform. Third, the schedule-revision signal: bid date, pre-bid conference or RFI cutoff moved to inside two working days. Together they tell you whether the addendum is paperwork or scope.
What "scope creep" computes to on the scorecard
BidVigil's win-probability model downgrades any bid where the addenda-to-spec ratio crosses a second threshold and the new trades are not on the firm's bonding line. A late addendum on a bid the firm has already started to underbid is a -12 to -18 score hit before the PM even opens the file. The signal is what lets the morning digest say "this is no longer the same bid you scored on Wednesday" — which is the only line a pilot PM ever needs to read first.
How it changes the pilot scoring pipeline
Every posting is rescored the moment a new addendum or drawing revision is published against it. The change is rendered into the morning digest on the same day it lands. For Friday-afternoon addenda, the digest lands on Monday already updated — including the rescored probability, the rescoped bonding line and the rescored bonding-fit. Pilot firms stop the "we'll catch it Monday" weekday, because Monday is the day the digest already explained what changed.
What a pilot firm does with the alert
Read the three-signal summary first. If the spec-delta and drawing-revision signals are small, treat it as paperwork and continue the original go/no-go. If both signals are notable, treat it as a separate "round 2" scope and re-derive the scorecard from the new spec. If the schedule signal is tight (bid day within two working days) and the scope signal is heavy, downgrade to a no-bid on the PM sign-off and capture the no-bid reason — it feeds the next quarter's weighting.
When pilot firms run BidVigil against last quarter, this is the signal they see most
Pilot firms running BidVigil in shadow mode against the prior quarter consistently report that the single most useful lesson is "the bids I would have down-bid on after a 4 PM Friday addendum all turn out to be the ones where I lost money." BidVigil turns that signal into the rescored probability and the rescoped bonding line — and gives the pilot PM the breakdown behind the new number before the score is read out.
What to wire into your pilot read-out
Three numbers, in this order: rescored probability (vs the original), rescoped bonding line (vs the original), and the addenda-to-spec ratio for the posting. If any two of those move against the firm, the bid is now downgraded. If only one moves, treat as paperwork. None of those is a guess — each is the same breakdown the pilot PM would have derived by hand on Monday morning, only hours earlier and on every bid at once.
Request pilot access
BidVigil scores every bid the firm has on file against every addendum, drawing revision and schedule change on the morning it lands — and the pilot is open to a single firm per trade-region, per quarter. Email bidvigil@polsia.app or use the contact form on the home page to share your firm, primary contact, trades, geography and current backlog, and we come back with a scored feed inside two weeks.
One firm per trade-region, per quarter. Email bidvigil@polsia.app or use the contact form to share your firm, trades, geography and current backlog — and we come back with a scored feed inside two weeks.