A federal construction contractor now drafts five-volume MATOC proposals from 20 years of its own past performance.
.webp)
Two decades of proposals and project histories feed every draft.
Five-volume technical proposals for agencies like the Army Corps of Engineers.
Drafts trace back to SEG's own track record, synced from SharePoint.
For SEG, a Northern Virginia design-build contractor working for federal agencies including the US Army Corps of Engineers, winning work means producing dense, five-volume technical proposals for multiple-award task order contracts (MATOCs). ChatGPT helped a little, but it didn't know SEG. With Inventive AI as its proposal software for federal contractors, the team now drafts from 20 years of its own past performance. This case study is based on conversations with Danmei Gui, President, and Ryan Chamel, Proposal Manager, at SEG.
SEG is a woman-owned, 8(a)-certified design-build contractor [confirm 8(a) status] based in Northern Virginia, founded in 2005 as a structural engineering firm. It works on federal projects for agencies including the US Army Corps of Engineers and pursues about 25 large projects a year, many through multiple-award task order contracts.
SEG first tried ChatGPT as a drafting assistant for its technical proposals. ChatGPT understands construction in general, but it doesn't know SEG.
Federal evaluators want specific proof of capability, so every generic answer needed rework. Comparing ChatGPT vs AI RFP software made the gap clear: the general-purpose bot was creating almost as much work as it saved.
"We used a little bit with ChatGPT for the technical proposal. And it's helpful, but it's not tailored, specific to the technical proposal... When I use ChatGPT, I keep going back to ask more questions, ask more questions."
— Danmei Gui, President, SEG
To win federal work, a proposal has to sound like the contractor bidding on it. SEG connected Inventive AI to its internal SharePoint server through Inventive's integrations.
Inventive AI ingested two decades of SEG's past proposals and project histories into the knowledge hub. Because it syncs with SharePoint automatically, the knowledge base stays current without manual uploads, and every drafted answer cites the part of SEG's track record it came from.
"I feel like the real difference and benefit here is that the internal knowledge database that it's building on and it's not just pulling from random ChatGPT sources."
— Ryan Chamel, Proposal Manager, SEG
For government contractors, compliance is the biggest hurdle. A MATOC solicitation has to be broken down into strict evaluation factors and sub-factors.
Inventive AI automated this shredding for SEG. Instead of passing one large Word document back and forth, the platform splits the solicitation into sections, so the proposal team works in one shared workspace.
"I really like how it's broken into sections too. It's awesome how it makes it for you, but it's also how you can work on the sections separately under the sub-factors... How cool that we can assign each other a factor, and we can put a deadline on it in here, and if you need to review it, you just review it in here."
— Ryan Chamel, Proposal Manager, SEG
By pairing AI RFP automation with its own proposal history, SEG got AI for government proposals that understands the details of federal construction contracting. Drafts now start from what SEG has actually built, and the owner, proposal manager and project leads each work their assigned factors in one place.
Inventive AI helps contractors and professional services firms respond to complex government RFPs with cited answers drawn from their own past performance.
Book a demo to see how Inventive AI handles proposals like SEG's.
