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Massaro Construction
MASSARO CORPORATION

Smart Proposal Assistant

AI-Powered Proposal Intelligence
January 2026

Unlock the latent value in your proposal data—win more work, faster.

Prepared by:Vambrace AIVambrace AI

What is AI?

Trained on Scale

Modern AI has processed the equivalent of millions of books—more text than a person could read in 4,000 lifetimes. This includes books, articles, code, and documents across every industry.

From this training, AI learns patterns: how language works, how ideas connect, how problems get solved.

Text In, Text Out

At its core, AI transforms text. Give it a question, it produces an answer. Give it a document, it can summarize, analyze, or rewrite it.

Everything digital—documents, code, databases—ultimately reduces to text. AI can process and find patterns across all of it.

The implication: Any text-heavy business process is now a candidate for AI acceleration.

Organizational Opportunity

AI is trained on public data—the same data available to everyone.

When you apply AI to your proprietary data—decades of proposals, project history, and hard-won expertise—you get output that's uniquely yours.

The result: Compete faster and more effectively by leveraging your full institutional history on every pursuit.

Why Proposals

Construction proposals are uniquely suited for AI: they're text-heavy, follow predictable patterns, and contain years of accumulated expertise ready to be activated.

Why Proposals + AI

  • Massive text volume — Thousands of pages of proposals, RFPs, and project documentation
  • Repeated patterns — Similar sections, qualification language, and approaches across submissions
  • Rich historical data — Years of wins, losses, and lessons embedded in past proposals
  • Time-intensive process — High leverage when you accelerate what takes 20-40+ hours

The Economic Upside

  • More at-bats — Bid on projects you'd otherwise pass on
  • Sharper submissions — Consistently surface your best work
  • Compounding returns — Every proposal makes the system smarter
  • Scalable capacity — Grow pursuits without growing headcount proportionally

The Solution

Smart Proposal Assistant activates your proposal data—making every past submission work for you on every future pursuit.

1
Instant Search
Ask anything about your past proposals in plain English. Find relevant projects, language, and approaches in seconds instead of hours.
2
Auto-Prep
Drop in a new RFP and get an instant briefing: similar past projects, recommended team, win themes, and key requirements extracted automatically.
3
Smart Drafting
Generate 50-80% of proposal content for team review—letting your experts focus on strategy and differentiation, not rewriting boilerplate.

Secure & Private: Your data stays on your infrastructure. No proposals sent to external AI services without your explicit approval.

How It Works

Your Data Becomes Fuel

  • Past Proposals — PDFs, Word docs—the raw text that AI processes
  • RFPs — Historical requirements for pattern matching
  • Closeout Documents — Project outcomes and lessons
  • Team Resumes — Qualifications for smart team selection
  • Win/Loss Data — Outcome tracking to sharpen future bids

You Get Leverage

  • Instant Answers — "What was our approach on the UPMC lab project?"
  • Auto-Prep — Briefing packages generated in minutes, not days
  • Team Matching — Best-fit personnel surfaced for each pursuit
  • Draft Content — 50-80% of sections ready for review
  • Pattern Recognition — See what's working across all your bids
Example Query
"Show me all AHN projects where we worked in an active hospital environment. What language did we use to describe our infection control approach?"

The Business Case

Two levers drive growth: win more of the bids you pursue and cost-effectively pursue more bids.

Today
100
proposals/year
10%
win rate
10 wins @ $10M (7% margin)
$7.0M
gross profit
With Smart Proposal Assistant
125
proposals/year
+25%
12%
win rate
+2 pts
15 wins @ $10M (7% margin)
$10.5M
gross profit

5 additional wins = $3.5M in additional gross profit
Same team, same cost structure—just better-equipped to win.

Section 2

About Vambrace AI

Your partner in practical AI solutions

Who We Are

Vambrace AI helps established companies leverage AI to build lasting competitive advantages.

We're not a software vendor selling licenses. We're a hands-on partner who builds, deploys, and maintains custom AI solutions tailored to your business.

Our focus: practical AI that solves real problems—not science projects or hype. We specialize in text-heavy business processes where AI can deliver compounding returns.

We understand family-owned businesses and physical industries—construction, manufacturing, field services—companies built on relationships and reputation.

Luke Deasy, Founder

  • 8 years in technology and business strategy
  • Background in investment banking and venture capital
  • Carnegie Mellon, BS Statistics
Our Approach
We don't just build and disappear. We stay engaged, continuously improving your systems as AI technology evolves and your needs change.

Our Process

A structured approach that delivers value quickly while building for the long term.

1
Discovery
Understand your current process, pain points, and goals. Identify quick wins and long-term opportunities.
2
Design
Define the solution architecture, data requirements, and success metrics. Align on scope and timeline.
3
Build
Develop the system, ingest your data, and iterate based on feedback. Deliver working software in weeks, not months.
4
Evolve
Continuous improvement based on usage patterns, new needs, and advancing AI capabilities.

Typical timeline: Discovery to working system in 8-10 weeks. Continuous refinement ongoing.

What's Included

Managed AI Service

  • Complete build — Document ingestion, AI system, web interface
  • Secure hosting — Private cloud infrastructure (Digital Ocean)
  • Ongoing support — Maintenance, updates, user assistance
  • Continuous improvement — New features and refinements
  • Document ingestion — We load and index your proposal archive

2-Month Pilot Structure

Month 1: Foundation ($5K)
Document ingestion, working search interface, retrieval validation, basic draft capability.
Month 2: Refinement ($5K)
Expanded archive, improved retrieval, enhanced drafting, live pursuit test, team onboarding.
Termination Option
Option to exit after Month 1 with no further obligation if success criteria not met.

2-Month Pilot

Structured engagement with clear success criteria at Month 1. Option to terminate if value not demonstrated.

Month 1: Foundation
$5,000
  • Load 20-30 RFPs into knowledge base
  • Deploy working search interface
  • Validate retrieval accuracy
  • Generate basic draft content
Month 2: Refinement
$5,000
  • Expand archive based on feedback
  • Tune retrieval and draft quality
  • Full live pursuit test
  • Team onboarding and training
Month 1 Success Criteria
• Search returns relevant content 8/10 queries
• 2+ team members used system independently
• Draft content requires <60% rewriting
Termination Option
If Month 1 does not meet success criteria, Massaro may terminate with no further obligation. Risk is shared.

Long-Term Opportunity

If the pilot proves valuable, the system can expand to deliver additional capabilities.

Full Archive Integration
Ingest complete proposal history spanning multiple years. Add metadata tagging. Tune retrieval for maximum accuracy.
Automated Prep Packages
When a new RFP arrives, auto-generate a prep package with relevant past content, team qualifications, and project references.
Competitive Intelligence
Research competitor positioning, decision-maker profiles, and market intelligence to inform pursuit strategy.
Cost Data Integration
Query historical bids, Excel spreadsheets, and unit pricing data to support estimating workflows.

No commitment required. Future phases are scoped collaboratively based on pilot results. Continue only if the pilot demonstrates clear value.

Why Custom Development

Why not just use ChatGPT or enterprise AI tools?

The Limitations of General Tools

  • No persistent memory — ChatGPT forgets everything between sessions; your institutional knowledge doesn't compound
  • Limited context — Even enterprise tools can only process a handful of documents at once, not your full archive
  • Generic output — Without training on your proposals, AI produces generic content that doesn't sound like you
  • Manual overhead — Every user has to re-upload, re-explain, and re-prompt from scratch

What Custom Delivers

  • Permanent knowledge base — Every proposal, once loaded, is searchable forever
  • Unlimited scale — Search across thousands of documents simultaneously
  • Your voice — AI learns your company's style, terminology, and winning approaches
  • Organization-wide access — Everyone benefits from the same institutional memory

The difference: General AI tools are powerful but stateless. Custom development turns your proposal history into a persistent competitive advantage.

Next Steps

1
Confirm Scope
Review the formal proposal and confirm Phase 1 pilot scope.
2
Document Access
Share access to 20-30 recent RFPs (SharePoint, network drive, or file transfer).
3
Kickoff Call
Schedule kickoff to review workflow and identify the first live pursuit to test against.
Proposed Kickoff
February 2, 2026
2-Month Pilot • $5,000/month • Option to exit after Month 1

Questions?

Luke Deasy

luke@vambrace.ai
(412) 807-1999

Our mission: Help established companies leverage AI to build lasting competitive advantages.

Appendix

About AI

Background context for teams new to AI

AI Explained

A simple overview of how modern AI actually works.

What's Happening Under the Hood

Modern AI systems are trained on massive amounts of text—books, articles, websites, documents. Through this training, they learn patterns: how sentences are structured, how ideas connect, and what typically follows what.

When you ask a question, the AI doesn't "look up" an answer. It predicts the most likely helpful response based on patterns it learned during training.

Think of it like autocomplete on steroids—but instead of predicting the next word, it predicts entire paragraphs of relevant, coherent content.

Key Concepts

Large Language Models (LLMs)
The AI systems (like ChatGPT, Claude) that understand and generate human language.
Training Data
The text the AI learned from. More relevant data = better results for your use case.
Context Window
How much information the AI can "see" at once when generating a response.

The breakthrough: AI can now process your documents at scale—answering questions, finding patterns, and drafting content—all in plain English.

What AI Is (and Isn't)

AI isn't science fiction—it's a practical tool that amplifies your team's expertise.

What AI Isn't

  • A job replacement — AI augments your team, handling repetitive work so experts can focus on strategy
  • A mysterious black box — It's pattern matching at scale, not magic or consciousness
  • Plug-and-play magic — Value builds over time with clear goals and human oversight
  • Only for tech companies — Construction firms are seeing real results today

What AI Is

  • A knowledge multiplier — Access your team's collective experience instantly
  • A time saver — Automate research and drafting so your people do high-value work
  • A competitive edge — Companies adopting AI are winning more work
  • Practical today — No PhD required; modern AI tools are accessible and proven

The bottom line: AI doesn't replace the judgment and relationships that win projects—it gives your team superpowers to pursue and win more of them.

Where AI Shines

AI isn't good at everything—but it's exceptionally good at certain types of work.

AI Excels When There's...

  • Large volumes of documents — Hundreds of past proposals, RFPs, closeout reports that no human can hold in memory
  • Repetitive patterns — Similar "About Us" sections, qualification statements, and boilerplate that get reused with variations
  • Fine print and compliance — Contract terms, insurance requirements, and regulatory language that needs consistent review
  • Needle-in-haystack searches — Finding that one project from 2019 where you solved a specific problem

AI Struggles When There's...

  • Relationship nuance — Reading a room, understanding client politics, building trust
  • Novel strategy — Creative positioning that's never been done before
  • Judgment calls — Go/no-go decisions that require intuition and experience
  • Human connection — The handshake, the site walk, the personal touch that wins work

Proposal work is a near-perfect fit: high volume, repeated patterns, mountains of historical text, and compliance requirements—freeing your team for the strategy and relationships that actually win jobs.

The Culture of Winning Organizations

Companies seeing real value from AI share a common trait: they're willing to experiment, learn, and adapt.

Embrace Experimentation
The best organizations treat AI projects as learning opportunities. They start small, test ideas, and iterate—knowing that early experiments inform better solutions.
Encourage Curiosity
When team members feel safe to ask "what if?" and explore new tools, innovation happens naturally. Great ideas often come from unexpected places.
Lead by Example
When leadership gets hands-on with AI—even imperfectly—it signals that learning is valued. This creates permission for everyone to engage.
The Research Says
88% of organizations now use AI regularly—but nearly two-thirds are still in "experimentation mode." The winners are simply the ones who started.
The Opportunity
You don't need a perfect roadmap. Companies seeing the most value treat AI as a journey of continuous improvement, not a one-time project.