Case Study
From 34% to 67%: How a GC Doubled Their Win Rate in 90 Days
A mid-size general contractor with 500+ historical pursuits used SiteScope to identify which projects they should have pursued, which would have been profitable, and how team decisions impacted outcomes.
Bidding on Everything, Winning on Too Little
Like most general contractors, this firm was pursuing every project that crossed their desk. Their pre-construction team was experienced, their estimators were skilled, and their go/no-go process followed a familiar pattern: extensive estimating work, a review meeting, and a final judgment call.
The numbers told a different story.
- 34% win rate — roughly one in three pursuits resulted in a win
- Significant bid costs on every pursuit — each failed bid absorbed $15,000 to $100,000+ in estimator time, preparation, and materials
- No systematic way to learn from losses — years of project history sat in their CRM, but no one had the tools to extract patterns from it
- Unprofitable wins eroding margins — some projects they won turned out to be the ones they shouldn't have pursued at all
The firm's VP of Pre-Construction knew the team was strong. The question was whether they were deploying that strength on the right projects.
Turning Years of Bid History Into a Decision Engine — Not a Spreadsheet
SiteScope ingested the firm's complete pursuit history — over 500 bids spanning multiple years. The data included project types, estimated values, bid amounts, win/loss outcomes, project managers assigned, subcontractors involved, and final project margins where available.
Data Ingestion
The firm exported their historical pursuit data from their existing records. No system changes were required. No IT involvement. SiteScope handled the data mapping and cleaning.
Pattern Identification
SiteScope's system analyzed every pursuit in the dataset, identifying the project characteristics, team configurations, and market conditions that correlated with wins, losses, and profitability. These patterns were specific to this firm — reflecting their unique strengths, market position, and competitive dynamics.
Custom Model Training
Using these patterns, SiteScope trained a custom model exclusively on this firm's data. The model was designed to score new opportunities based on the firm's historical performance — not on industry averages or generic benchmarks.
Retrospective Validation
To prove the model's value before asking the firm to trust it on live decisions, SiteScope ran a retrospective analysis on the most recent year of bids. The model evaluated every pursuit the firm had made — and showed which ones it would have recommended pursuing and which it would have recommended passing on.
The Data Spoke Clearly
86% Win/Loss Prediction Accuracy
The model correctly predicted whether the firm would win or lose a given pursuit 86% of the time — based on project characteristics alone, before a bid was even prepared. (Vs. ~80% naive baseline of predicting all losses.)
Win Rate: 34% → 67%
When the model's recommendations were applied retrospectively to the firm's pursuit history, the projected win rate on prioritized pursuits increased from 34% to 67%. The firm would have won nearly twice as often — by bidding on fewer, better-matched projects.
Reduced Wasted Bid Costs
The pursuits the model recommended skipping were overwhelmingly losses. Each skipped bid represents $15,000 to $100,000+ in preparation costs that could have been redirected to winnable, profitable opportunities.
Improved Margin Quality
By filtering out pursuits associated with low or negative margins, the model didn't just increase the win rate — it improved the quality of the wins. The firm would have spent its resources on projects more likely to deliver healthy margins.
Retrospective Analysis Results
The Financial Impact
The ROI case for this firm was clear and immediate.
Bid cost savings
With an average bid cost of $50,000 and dozens of failed pursuits per year, even a modest reduction in wasted bids translates to hundreds of thousands of dollars in recovered resources annually.
Revenue from better wins
For a firm bidding on $2M–$5M projects at a 5% margin, each additional profitable win generates $100,000–$250,000 in margin. The model projected multiple additional wins per year from the same pursuit volume.
Resource reallocation
Beyond direct cost savings, the firm's estimators would reclaim weeks of preparation time previously spent on low-probability pursuits — time that can be redirected to higher-value bids and more thorough estimates on winnable projects.
The bottom line: SiteScope pays for itself on the first additional win it helps capture. Everything beyond that is upside.
"The retrospective analysis showed us exactly where we'd been leaving money on the table — and which pursuits we should have skipped. We've never had that clarity before."
— VP of Pre-Construction, Mid-Size General Contractor
Your Bid History Knows Which Projects to Pursue. See What It Says.
Every general contractor's data holds the same kind of patterns — in which projects you win, where your margins hold, and which team decisions drive results. The question is whether you're using them. Let us run the analysis on your pursuit history — and show you what your data already knows.
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