Every estimator has lost an afternoon to a question like this: where in the spec book did it say the ceiling tile had to be a particular grade? You know you saw it. You just cannot find the page.
Chantro's scope step is built around that problem. It reads the bid documents once, builds a categorized list of activities, and shows the spec page each line came from wherever the documents give one. If a line shows no page, treat it with more care, and the page is how you check the ones that do.
What happens when you drop the documents in
Say Marcus is bidding the Southgate Medical Office. He opens the estimate, goes to the Scope step, and drops in the spec book, the RFP and the drawing set. Chantro accepts PDF, images, Word, Excel and plain text.
Behind the scenes, three things happen while he gets a coffee:
- Each document is read and indexed in the background, so later steps can search it.
- Requirements are pulled out per document: submittal rules, allowances, testing, closeout items.
- The documents are compared with each other. Where two of them disagree, or repeat each other, Chantro lists the conflict for you to resolve. Nothing is hidden or quietly merged.
Generating the scope
Once the documents are in, the "Generate activities from documents" button builds the scope. Activities stream in grouped by category, and each one carries a chip such as "SOW p.12" when the documents give a page.
The chip is a page number, not a clickable highlight. You open the document to that page and read the source yourself. That is a limit, and we would rather say so than let you assume it jumps straight to the paragraph.
Why the citation matters
A scope you cannot trace is a scope you have to redo by hand. With the page next to the line you can do three useful things quickly.
| You want to... | The citation lets you... |
|---|---|
| Confirm a line is real | Open the page and read the sentence |
| Catch a misread | See at once that the page says something different |
| Defend a number later | Point the owner or a sub at the exact page |
An estimator checking a hundred lines does not want to hunt. Checking goes fast when the page is right there, and slowly when it is not.
Refining it by talking to it
The first pass is rarely the last. Under the list there is a "Refine with AI" box. Type what you want changed, in the words you would use with a junior estimator: "split demolition into interior and exterior." The list updates and a new version appears in the version bar. Older versions stay, so you can go back. The box sits under the scope in the picture above.
Checking against your own history
Two more helpers sit on the same step, and neither is a guess dressed up as knowledge.
"Check scope gaps" compares this bid with your own past bids. If an activity shows up in at least half of your similar finished jobs and is missing here, it lists it, for example "in 4 of 6 similar jobs." You add it with one click. It needs at least three similar finished bids to say anything, and when it has too little history it tells you so.
"Start from a similar past estimate" copies activities from an old bid onto an empty scope. It copies the activities only, never the prices. Past bids like the Bee Creek Dental Suite Build-Out are exactly what it is looking for when you bid the next clinic.
Picking a bid lead
The same step can also suggest who should lead the bid. It looks at your team by role and at how many open bids each person is carrying, and it falls back to a plain rule when the data is thin. It is a suggestion in a list, not an assignment. Dana still decides.
What it does not do
- It depends on readable documents. A bad scan of a spec book gives a worse scope.
- It does not replace your read of the book. It gives you a first draft with receipts.
- AI steps use credits, and what is included depends on your plan.
The short version
Drop the documents, generate, read the page numbers, fix what is wrong, ask for changes in plain words. The point is not that the draft is perfect. The point is that each line with a page tells you where to look, so checking it costs minutes instead of an afternoon.
