SK Construction Builds Korea's First AI-Powered Bid Invitation Analysis System

▲ Operating screen of the bid proposal analysis system using AI technology developed for the first time in Korea by SK Engineering & Construction (Provided by SK Engineering & Construction)

[Asia Economy Reporter Chunhee Lee] SK Engineering & Construction has become the first domestic construction company to successfully establish a bid invitation (ITB) analysis system utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) technology.

On the 20th, SK Engineering & Construction announced that it had built a "Comprehensive AI Bid Invitation Analysis System" covering all design trades including general contracts, processes, piping, machinery, and electrical work by leveraging SK C&C's AI 'Aibril.'

A bid invitation document is created by the client to inform bidding companies of requirements and precautions during the bidding process. An SK Engineering & Construction official explained, "Typically, analyzing bid invitations consisting of about 10,000 pages required 30 engineers working 100 hours each, but this system can reduce the time required by more than 60%. Accuracy can also be improved by more than 7%."

Although some AI-based bid invitation analysis systems existed domestically, they were mostly simple keyword-based searches limited to certain trades. SK Engineering & Construction began research last year to build a system that applies AI learning and analyzes risk factors by trade for all design trades, including general contracts, making it the first of its kind in Korea.

SK Engineering & Construction first created a database by learning from past project bid invitation information and various internal knowledge data on quality, safety, and environment through Aibril. In particular, they continuously verified whether the system could quickly and accurately inform users by analyzing bid invitations to organize client requirements and various risk factors.

After about a year of verification, SK Engineering & Construction achieved an analysis accuracy exceeding 94%. Generally, an accuracy above 80% in AI-based data analysis is considered reliable. SK Engineering & Construction plans to raise the analysis accuracy to around 99% in the future.

Since last year, SK Engineering & Construction has been using the AI analysis system to prepare bids for overseas plant projects and plans to expand its application to overseas infrastructure project bids starting this year. Additionally, AI technology will be broadly utilized in legal, contract, quality, safety, and marketing tasks that require reviewing many documents.

Jonghwa Lee, head of SK Engineering & Construction’s IM&T Group, said, “Through the establishment of this AI analysis system, collaboration between AI and engineers has become possible, which is expected to greatly contribute to SK Engineering & Construction’s differentiated competitiveness and productivity improvement.” He added, “By using AI to quickly handle simple and repetitive tasks, engineers can devote more time to important tasks such as interpreting analysis results and decision-making, which is very meaningful.”