Use case · bid defense

Answer the challenge with a source.

The bid-defense meeting turns on one question: where did that number come from? Build the feasibility section from public evidence with a citation behind every figure — so the answer is a record and a snapshot date rather than an analyst’s spreadsheet.

the numbersourcepublic record

The number, and the record it came from.

The situation

The proposal is strong. The feasibility section is soft.

Everything else in the bid is checkable — the team, the timeline, the price. The enrolment and site assumptions are the part where the sponsor has to take your word for it, and that is where the meeting gets uncomfortable.

A cited verdict, in time for the bid
Same day
Linked to its public record and snapshot
Every figure
Tamper-evident audit bundle per run
Part 11

What happens today

The evidence is assembled against the clock.

Bid timelines are short and feasibility is the longest-lead input, so it is the input most likely to be estimated rather than established.

Site surveys do not come back in time

The questionnaire goes out; a fraction of sites respond inside the window. The proposal is written on the responses that arrived, not on a representative picture.

Enrolment rates come from precedent, loosely defined

"Comparable studies" is doing a lot of work in most feasibility sections. Which studies, and how comparable, is rarely written down.

Competing-trial density is not measured

The sites you propose may be running two other studies in the same indication. That shows up in enrolment months later, and it was knowable at bid time.

The follow-up question has no answer

When the sponsor asks how the number was derived, an internal model is a weak reply — and it is the moment the rest of the proposal starts being re-examined.

What you do instead

Every number in the section arrives with its record.

Citations behind each figure

Enrolment reach, site density, cost band and probability of success each link to the public record and snapshot date they were read from.

Site density against competition

For each proposed country and site: how many comparable trials are already recruiting in that catchment, and what the investigators actually delivered before.

The eligibility burden, quantified

How much the sponsor’s own criteria narrow the recruitable pool — a conversation that positions you as the party who read the protocol properly.

A cost band with its benchmarks

An operational cost range anchored to public benchmarks for this design and geography, stated with its derivation.

White-labelled output

The section, the citations and the export carry your brand. It reads as your work product, because the analysis is being done for you, not resold to you.

An audit bundle if they ask

A hash-chained, tamper-evident record of the run — every action, actor, timestamp and payload hash — for the sponsor’s QA team.

What runs, and who drafts

The scope for this job

A bid is judged on deliverability, so the section is built from the design, cohort and operations pillars, with the verdict as the summary line.

How it runs

Protocol in, section out.

  1. Upload the sponsor protocol

    Indication, phase, endpoints and eligibility criteria are read out automatically, so the assessment is run against the actual protocol rather than a summary of it.

  2. The evidence is assembled and cited

    Cohort reach, site and investigator track record, competing-trial density, cost benchmarks and a directional probability of success — each linked to its source record.

  3. Take it into the defense

    Paste the section into the proposal under your brand. When a figure is challenged, open the citation — and, if the sponsor’s QA asks, the audit bundle.

What lands on your desk

The feasibility section, ready to paste.

Written as proposal prose with the evidence attached, not as a dashboard someone has to be trained to read.

What lands on your desk

White-labelled feasibility section + citation index + audit bundle

  • Country and site shortlist with investigator track record and competing-trial density per catchment.
  • A recruitable-cohort estimate with the eligibility burden broken out.
  • An operational cost band with the public benchmarks it was derived from.
  • A directional probability of success with its assumptions stated in the open.
  • A citation index mapping every figure in the section to a public record and snapshot date.
  • A hash-chained audit bundle for the run, exportable for the sponsor’s QA team.

Honest limits

Where this stops

What this does not do for you. Naming it here is cheaper for both of us than finding it in a procurement review.

It does not replace site outreach. It tells you which sites to approach and what to ask them — the relationship and the confirmation are still yours.

Cost bands are public-benchmark derived and will not match your internal costing model or a specific site budget.

Enrolment estimates model public data on comparable trials. They are a defensible basis for an assumption, not a guarantee of accrual.

The probability of success is directional and shown with its assumptions — do not present it in a bid as a calibrated forecast.

It cannot see unregistered competing studies or a site’s current staffing and capacity.

Questions

The ones you would ask first

Does the sponsor see that this came from a vendor?

Not unless you tell them. Verdicts, citations, exports and audit bundles are white-labelled under your brand in CRO deployments.

How fast is fast enough for a bid window?

A protocol uploaded in the morning returns a cited verdict the same day, which is what makes it usable as a bid input rather than as a post-award exercise.

What do we say if the sponsor challenges the enrolment number?

Open the citation. The figure resolves to the registry and literature records it was derived from, with the snapshot date — so the discussion becomes about the evidence rather than about your analyst.

Can we run this across every opportunity, not just the big ones?

That is the intent. Because the marginal cost of an assessment is not an analyst-week, screening the whole pipeline stops being a budget decision.

Win the meeting on the evidence.

Send us a protocol you are bidding on. We’ll return a white-labelled, fully cited feasibility section — with the audit bundle behind it — in time to use.