How OpenAsset Cut Proposal Creation Time by 50% by Embedding Claude Into Every Step

TL;DR: Built Environment proposal responses mix standard boilerplate with project-specific detail that has to be pulled from hundreds of past projects and checked against dense RFP requirements. OpenAsset brought in Sparq to prototype and ship AI capability directly into OpenAsset Shred rather than bolt on a generic chatbot. The result: three production features—Proposal Management Plan, AI Writer, and Draft Reviewer—built with Claude, that pull requirements out of RFPs automatically, draft grounded content from a firm's own project history, and flag RFP response gaps before submission.

The Challenge

Built Environment proposals are split into two kinds of content: standard response categories every firm answers the same way, and highly specific detail tied to the exact project, client, site, and building type. Producing a quality response means a marketer reads a dense RFP by hand, pulls binding requirements, drafts content grounded in the firm's own project history, and checks every section against the RFP before it goes out. At firms managing hundreds of past projects, finding the one relevant precedent—a LEED-certified build in the right market, a past client relationship, a comparable scope—means manually searching through project archives that weren’t built to be searched that way.

OpenAsset wanted a purpose-built capability that could reliably extract structured data from messy RFP PDFs, draft content grounded in real project history, and flag RFP criteria gaps before a human ever reviewed the draft.

The Solution

Sparq stood up a dedicated engineering team working directly alongside OpenAsset's Product Managers and Staff Engineers. New ideas moved through rapid prototyping and proof-of-concept cycles before anything touched production, and Sparq engineers embedded in OpenAsset's engineering teams to ship the winners. Three capabilities, built with Claude, came out of that process:

Proposal Management Plan extracts submission deadlines, project delivery method, offer limits, and other binding requirements from RFP documents into a structured, source-cited plan—replacing manual re-keying and highlighter reconciliation.

AI Writer, built into every content block in Proposal Studio, lets marketers refine drafted content in place—summarize, restructure, adjust length, or transform text with a free-form instruction—with every suggestion previewed before it's accepted.

Draft Reviewer checks a completed draft against every requirement in the source RFP in one pass, flags compliance gaps with severity, explains what's missing, and suggests fixes.

Outcomes

Proposal Management Plan removes manual RFP requirement analysis, saving hours per response. Draft Reviewer catches gaps a tired reviewer misses in the final push before submission. Proposal Studio surfaces a firm's best-matching past narratives and projects from its OpenAsset DAM library, and AI Writer refines that content in place—cutting the hours previously spent hunting through past projects and rewriting from scratch. The marketer decides what makes the final draft.

“We set out on a mission to improve the lives of Built Environment Marketers. Our partnership with Sparq has accelerated our ability to do so.” – Edwin Marty, CTO, OpenAsset

“We didn't just build features and hand them off. We built a process OpenAsset's own team can run again on the next idea, and every Built Environment firm using Proposal Studio gets that back automatically from here forward.” – Chris McRae, Senior Client Partner, Sparq

Proposal Management Plan and AI Chat existed before Sparq joined the engagement; Sparq built the new versions now in production. Sparq built AI Writer and Draft Reviewer from scratch and shipped them into Proposal Studio.

If your organization is looking to embed AI directly into a customer-facing product rather than bolt it on, this is what an embedded, production-grade build looks like. Learn more →