A retrieval engine that sits beside the existing system, reads what it already produces, and closes proposal writing. Aimed at construction owner-operators, catching the error before it becomes a change order.
In short: Construction Proposal Builder on Retrieval is a retrieval engine aimed at construction owner-operators, covering proposal writing. It scores 75/100 on AltF Ideas, carried by demand (95) and held back by monetisation (38). Typical pricing is $800–$8.0k per customer per year, with a first version reachable in about a month for $7.0k–$17k.
Construction teams lose proposals rebuilt from scratch that are 80% identical. In most construction businesses this job has never had software written for it. Most operators assume this is simply the cost of doing business.
A narrow retrieval engine scoped to proposal writing alone — no platform, no migration, no six-month rollout. Revenue is flat saas, which suits a buyer who wants the cost to track the value rather than the seat count.
| Total addressable market | $1.0B |
|---|---|
| Category growth (CAGR) | 23% |
| Annual contract value | $800 – $8.0k |
| Pricing model | Flat SaaS |
| Time to first revenue | 36 days |
| Startup cost to MVP | $7.0k – $17k |
| Build effort | ~1 month |
Retrieval over private documents became cheap enough to run per query. Construction is growing at roughly 20% a year, and this job has not been re-tooled since it was designed around paper.
| Who | The gap |
|---|---|
| An internal hire | Works until volume doubles, then breaks again |
| A spreadsheet | The real incumbent in most of the market, and it is free |
| A generalist AI tool | No domain grounding, so output needs full human review |
Trust has to be earned before anyone lets this run unsupervised.
An idea you cannot act on is entertainment. Four concrete steps, wired to tools already running on AltFTool.
Score problem urgency, willingness to pay, and reachable audience size before writing any code.
→ AltF IdeaLabAsk how they handle this today and what it costs them. If nobody can quantify the pain, the demand score is optimistic.
→ Survey BuilderCheck availability, DNS, and email authentication in one pass so your first outreach lands in an inbox.
→ AltF DomainOpsStand up intake, the review queue, and billing before you build the clever part.
→ AltF Flow