Five small-manufacturer tasks where a model removes routine
- Tender documents → a checklist. The model reads the documents and builds a table: qualification criteria, documents for each, technical requirements for the product, bid security, deadlines.
- Checking the documents for requirements that contradict the law. For example, an annual income above the expected procurement value is a banned requirement.
- Process cards. From your notes and drawings the model makes operation cards in one format: material, tool, settings, inspection.
- Drafts of occupational safety instructions. In the structure the Regulation requires and from the equipment maker's manual.
- Answers to work questions. How to recalculate material use for a new batch, how to explain a delay to a customer: a draft the manager checks.
These tasks share one thing: the model works with a document, but a person signs it, submits it and answers for it. Where exactly that line runs is covered below.
Tender: a qualification requirements checklist
Open tenders on Prozorro are currently held under the Law on Public Procurement together with the Specifics approved by Cabinet of Ministers Resolution No. 1178 for the period of martial law and 90 days after it (version of 29.09.2026). Article 16 of the Law gives a contracting authority four qualification criteria to choose one or more from: equipment, facilities and technology; staff with the relevant qualifications; documented experience of a similar contract; financial capacity confirmed by financial statements. Separately, clause 47 of the Specifics lists grounds for exclusion: corruption offences, a manager's criminal record, tax debt, sanctions and so on.
A model does well one thing that takes a person an hour: sorting forty pages of documents into these frames. It also fails in one place: it invents requirements that are not in the documents or misses those hidden in an annex. So the model's instruction needs the rule 'for every requirement, the page or clause number of the documents'.
✓ — does it reliably; ≈ — does it with a check; ✗ — do not hand it over. Clause 47 of the Specifics: a bidder confirms the absence of most grounds by self-declaration in the electronic system when submitting a bid.
The staff statement is a separate data trap. For the 'qualified staff' criterion a workshop prepares a list of positions and backs it with diplomas and certificates. The model does not need scans of workers' documents: give it a 'position — qualification — years of experience' table without names, and add the names to the finished document yourself. Why, we explained in the article on data for an AI assistant.
Check: an income requirement that cannot exist
Article 16(3) of the Law: if a contracting authority sets a financial capacity criterion, it may not require an annual income (revenue) above the expected value of the procurement; if the procurement is split into lots, in proportion to the lot's value. A model finds such a mismatch quickly because it is a comparison of two numbers from one document.
A hypothetical example: an authority buys shelving for UAH 1,200,000 in three lots of UAH 400,000 and requires an annual income of at least UAH 2,000,000. For the whole procurement the maximum it may require is UAH 1,200,000; for one lot, UAH 400,000. A workshop with annual revenue of UAH 900,000 bidding for one lot meets the law but not the documents.
| What the workshop bids for | Expected value | Maximum income requirement under Art. 16 | Requirement in the documents | Excess |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| One lot | UAH 400,000 | UAH 400,000 | UAH 2,000,000 | 5 times |
| All three lots | UAH 1,200,000 | UAH 1,200,000 | UAH 2,000,000 | 1.67 times |
What to do about it is a person's decision: ask the authority to remove the violation (clause 54 of the Specifics, no later than three days before the bid deadline) or file a complaint with the review body (clause 59, also no later than three days before). The model drafts the request with a reference to Article 16(3), but a decision to complain is a decision about your relationship with the customer, and it is not a technical one.
Deadlines a person counts
A model is bad at dates: it does not know what time it is, confuses calendar and working days, and may take a deadline from the Law instead of the Specifics. The difference matters: under Article 24 of the Law clarifications can be requested no later than 10 days before the bid deadline, while under clause 54 of the Specifics, which apply now, no later than three days before. So keep deadlines in a calendar, and let the model only remind you where they come from.
| Stage | Deadline under the Specifics | Clause | What the model can do |
|---|---|---|---|
| A question or a demand to remove a violation in the documents | no later than 3 days before the bid deadline; the authority replies within 3 days | 54 | draft the request |
| A complaint about the documents to the review body | no later than 3 days before the bid deadline | 59 | a draft with legal references |
| The authority changed the documents | at least 4 days remain until the bid deadline | 54 | compare the new version with the old one |
| Correct discrepancies in the bid | 24 hours from the authority's demand; the demand is made only once | 43, 44 | a list of what must be corrected |
| The winner's documents on clause 47 grounds | no more than 4 days from the notice of intent to award | 47 | a list of certificates to order in advance |
The harshest row is the 24 hours. If a discrepancy is not corrected within that time, or the subject of procurement (product name, brand, model) is changed while correcting it, clause 44 obliges the authority to reject the bid. The model is useful here as a list: what exactly the authority asks for and which document covers it. Writing corrections in the last hour with a chatbot is a bad plan; better to keep a folder of standard certificates ready in advance.
A note on the future: on 27 May 2026 a new Law on Public Procurement No. 4888-IX was adopted; it comes into effect on 24 March 2027, and from the same date the current Law No. 922-VIII ceases to apply. Article numbers and possibly deadlines will change. Check a checklist the model builds for a 2027 tender against the act under which that particular procurement was announced.
Process cards and occupational safety instructions
A process card is the workshop's internal document, and here the model can be bolder: turn a foreman's notes like 'plywood 18, 300 mm saw, slow feed, check the edge with a template' into a card in a single format. The main rule: setting values (speed, temperature, pressure) come from the equipment's data sheet and your own trials, not from the model's answer.
An occupational safety instruction is another matter. The Regulation on developing occupational safety instructions (Order No. 9 of 29.01.1998, current version of 01.09.2017) is direct: instructions are developed on the basis of occupational safety regulations, the company's technological documentation and the safety requirements in the equipment maker's operating and repair documentation; they are approved by the employer and are binding on workers. The Regulation applies to everyone who uses hired labour, including a sole trader with two employees.
The Regulation also sets the structure, five sections: 'General provisions', 'Safety requirements before starting work', 'Safety requirements during work', 'Safety requirements after finishing work', 'Safety requirements in emergencies'. An instruction must be reviewed at least once every 5 years, and every 3 years for high-risk work, and also out of turn after an accident, an injury or a change of equipment.
Hence the split. The model receives the safety section of the equipment maker's manual and your description of the workplace and returns a draft in five sections plus a list of places where it lacks data. An occupational safety specialist or the employer reads it, adds the requirements of the regulations for your type of work and approves it. The model can keep the next review date in a table and remind you of it.
- Need to understand what the tender documents require?Forty pages, half of them about the bidder. Yes → the model builds a checklist with clause numbers, a person checks against the original
- Is the document signed with a qualified signature and submitted to Prozorro?It is a legally significant document. Yes → the model drafts, the manager checks every figure and signs
- A question about a deadline or a date?The model confuses the Law with the Specifics and working days with calendar days. Yes → a person sets the deadline in a calendar from the clause of the Specifics
- A machining setting or material consumption rate?It depends on your equipment. Yes → numbers from the equipment data sheet and your own trials; the model only formats them
- An occupational safety instruction?The employer approves it. Yes → the model drafts five sections, a specialist reads and completes it
What the model costs per month
Volumes are hypothetical: six sets of tender documents a month (40,000 input tokens, 4,000 output), five drafts of instructions or process cards (6,000 and 3,000) and 60 work questions (1,500 and 400). Prices from the OpenAI API pricing page on 26 October 2026 (standard processing, per million tokens): gpt-6-luna — $0.10 input and $0.50 output, gpt-6.1-sol — $2 and $10, gpt-6-astra — $10 and $50. The National Bank rate on 26 October 2026 is UAH 45.2021 per dollar.
| Model | One tender | One instruction | One question | Month |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| gpt-6-luna | UAH 0.27 | UAH 0.10 | UAH 0.02 | $0.07 (UAH 3) |
| gpt-6.1-sol | UAH 5.42 | UAH 1.90 | UAH 0.32 | $1.35 (UAH 61) |
| gpt-6-astra | UAH 27.12 | UAH 9.49 | UAH 1.58 | $6.75 (UAH 305) |
The gap between models is a hundredfold, but even the most expensive costs less than an hour of the person preparing the tender. Choose by whether the model invents requirements that are not in the documents: give two models the same tender and count the mistakes. Ukrainian documents tokenise less efficiently than English, so recalculate on your own files. How to reach a budget for a whole team we calculated in the article on what AI costs for a team of ten.
A first step for a week
- Find on Prozorro two completed tenders for your product where bidders were rejected, and save the documents and the rejection reports.
- Give the model the documents and an instruction: 'a list of qualification criteria and documents, a clause number for each; add nothing of your own'.
- Compare the checklist with the rejection report: did the model catch the requirement the bidder failed on?
- If it did in both tenders, use it for the next real tender, but the final check against the original documents is done by a person.
Our position
A model saves a small manufacturer the most time on reading tender documents: it can sort them by the Article 16 qualification criteria and find a requirement that contradicts the law better than a tired person at ten in the evening. But a person handles the bid, the price and the deadlines: a mistake in the 24-hour correction window means rejection, and 'the chatbot said so' is not an explanation an authority accepts. A model writes an occupational safety instruction as a draft; the employer approves it.
This position does not hold if the workshop does not take part in public procurement and sells only to private buyers: then what remains for a model is process cards, instructions and letters. It also does not hold for procurements announced after 24 March 2027 under the new Law No. 4888-IX: the deadlines and clause numbers in this article may not fit them. The income requirement calculation is hypothetical and concerns only the financial capacity criterion.
Checked on 26 October 2026 on the OpenAI API pricing page and at the National Bank of Ukraine; legal provisions from the texts of the Law on Public Procurement No. 922-VIII and No. 4888-IX, the procurement Specifics (Cabinet of Ministers Resolution No. 1178) and the Regulation on developing occupational safety instructions on zakon.rada.gov.ua. The arithmetic was recalculated in code. Procurement value, the authority's requirements and text volumes are hypothetical.