Stage 1 — How do we establish the baseline?

Gather complete completed bids, including the difficult versions that the team normally avoids showing in a demonstration. Obtain permission and remove personal or confidential details that the pilot does not need.

Create a document manifest: project pseudonym, filename, issue, received date, page count, document type and superseded status. Retain an immutable copy. Record which instructions arrived by email or clarification, since a PDF-only pipeline may otherwise appear to have missed information it never received.

For each baseline run, record preparation, review, correction and waiting separately. Have the reviewer identify missing scope and ambiguous values. If a historical bid was wrong, do not use it as unquestioned ground truth.

Exit evidence: document manifest, timing sheet, agreed task definition and a list of known failure cases.