Most scoping tools have a trust problem they don't talk about: they return a number, and the person reading it has no way to tell whether that number came from a live municipal record or a generic industry assumption. On a civil bid, that distinction is the entire risk — a missed stormwater or permitting detail can wipe out the fee on a project that was otherwise priced correctly. We built Civil Proposal around solving that trust problem directly, not papering over it.
The three labels, and what each one actually means
Every figure in a Civil Proposal scoping report carries one of three labels:
- Sourced — pulled directly from an open municipal, provincial or federal record for that specific site. This is the strongest tier: a permit timeline, a zoning designation, a servicing requirement that a public record actually states.
- Published standard — a known baseline that applies broadly but isn't verified against the specific site. Useful context, not a site-specific guarantee.
- Confirm with the authority — Civil Proposal doesn't have a reliable answer here, and says so. This is the tier that matters most, because it's the one most tools skip entirely in favour of a confident-sounding placeholder number.
Why the third label is the important one
A tool that always sounds confident is more dangerous than one that sometimes says "I don't know." If Civil Proposal returned a single blended number with no indication of where it came from, a firm bidding on a tight deadline would have no way to know which figures to double-check before submitting. The confirm with the authority label exists specifically so nobody mistakes an absence of data for a verified answer.
In practice, this means a scoping report for a well-covered municipality — one of the 240 currently configured with GIS data — will lean heavily on Sourced figures. A report for a site outside that coverage will show more Confirm-with-the-authority flags, and that's the tool working correctly, not failing. Coverage gaps get flagged, not hidden.
What this changes about how a report gets used
The practical effect is that a scoping report isn't meant to be forwarded straight into a bid unread. It's meant to tell a firm exactly which parts of their research are done and which parts still need a phone call — collapsing what used to be four to six hours of undifferentiated research into a short, specific list of open questions. That's a narrower promise than "AI-generated proposal," and it's the one we're willing to stand behind.
FAQ
What does "Sourced" mean in a Civil Proposal report?
The figure was pulled directly from an open municipal, provincial, or federal record for that specific site — not inferred or estimated.
What does "Confirm with the authority" mean?
Civil Proposal doesn't have a verified answer for that figure and is flagging it explicitly, rather than presenting a guess as if it were confirmed.
Does more municipal coverage mean fewer "Confirm with the authority" flags?
Generally yes. Reports for the 240 municipalities with configured GIS data lean more heavily on Sourced figures; reports for less-covered areas will show more items flagged for manual confirmation.
Is a Civil Proposal report meant to be submitted as-is?
No. It's built to show a firm which parts of their site research are backed by a record and which parts still need direct confirmation before a bid goes out.
Try it
Civil Proposal is live at civilproposal.com, with a free plan available to see what a labelled report looks like for a real site.