Functional DemoAnalytics System

AI Material Price Shock Monitor

Material price-shock monitoring that ties supplier price movement to margin exposure and pricing recommendations.

BidShield AI landing page headlined "Catch material price shocks before they eat your margin," with a sample command center showing margin at risk and recent price shocks. — BidShield AI landing page

What it solves

Construction and home service businesses lose margin when material prices climb without being noticed. It is hard to know which materials are rising, which suppliers are driving it, which estimates and services are affected, how much margin is at risk, and what price change to apply before the business loses money.

Built for Construction and home service businesses: contractor owners, construction operators, procurement managers, estimators, CFOs and controllers, and institutional construction buyers.

Overview

The app monitors real material prices from supplier uploads, economic indexes, and commodity signals, normalizing every record to a unit price with a source tier and confidence score. A detection engine compares prices against configurable thresholds to raise price-shock events, then a margin-exposure engine maps affected estimate templates and a pricing-recommendation engine proposes exact customer-facing price changes with explainable formulas. It surfaces alerts, an executive dashboard, and source-backed forecast ranges. Every screen connects price movement to business impact.

What this demonstrates

Builds a modular, tiered data-ingestion layer with source confidence scoring and CSV/XLSX price-sheet parsing. Implements a deterministic price-shock detection engine, a margin-exposure calculator across estimate templates, and a formula-based pricing-recommendation engine that never emits arbitrary AI prices, plus forecasts always shown as ranges with confidence.

What makes it different

Bad: 'Lumber is up 8%.' Good: 'Framing lumber is up 8.2% across 3 suppliers, impacting 14 open estimates and $18,400 in margin exposure — raise framing pricing 3.7% and request a 30-day price lock.' The product always connects price movement to business impact.

Price movement to money at riskEvery signal ties to affected estimates and margin exposure.
Real data, tiered by trustSix source tiers from customer invoices to AI-normalized estimates; seed data is dev-only.
AI is never the source of truthAI may normalize, match, and forecast, but never originates pricing facts.
Never overwrite price historyHistorical price records are preserved for auditability.
Formula-based, explainable recommendationsNo arbitrary AI prices; recommendations show their formula.
Forecasts as ranges, never guaranteesEvery forecast shows range, horizon, confidence, sources, and explanation.

Core capabilities · 14

Supplier Directory
Track suppliers with type, region, reliability score, and data source type.
Material Catalog
Manage categories, canonical materials, and supplier-product mappings with confidence.
Data Source & Price Ingestion
Modular adapters plus CSV/XLSX price-sheet upload with column mapping and validation.
Price Normalization Engine
Normalize units and unit pricing across suppliers and sources.
Material Watchlists
Subscribe to materials with importance levels and monthly usage estimates.
Risk Tolerance Settings
Global, category, and material-specific price-shock rules and thresholds.
Price Shock Detection Engine
Compare against baselines to detect shocks with severity, shock score, and confidence.
Margin Exposure Engine
Connect shocks to estimate templates to quantify margin at risk.
Pricing Recommendation Engine
Recommend exact customer price changes, quote validity, supplier switches, and price locks.
Alerts & Notifications
In-app center with deduplication, recipient management, and delivery logging.
Dashboard
Executive command center of margin at risk, active shocks, and recommended changes.
Forecasting & Confidence
Source-backed forecast ranges with horizon, confidence, and plain-English drivers.
Enterprise Controls
Role permissions, audit logs, data lineage, import history, and exportable reports.
Integration Layer
Provider adapters for economic indexes, commodities, suppliers, and business systems.

How it works

Add suppliers and map products to canonical materials
Ingest prices via upload, adapters, or manual entry
Normalize units and unit pricing
Set watchlists and price-shock rules
Detect shocks against historical baselines
Calculate margin exposure across affected estimates
Generate an explainable pricing recommendation
Notify the right people and export reports

How the score works

Shock Score

Percent change
Size of the price move over the lookback window.
Absolute cost increase
Dollar magnitude of the increase.
Lookback period
Timeframe over which the change occurred.
Suppliers affected
How many suppliers show the increase.
Source confidence
Trust tier and confidence of the underlying data.
Material importance
Watchlist importance of the material.
Monthly usage estimate
User-defined consumption volume.
Commodity/index confirmation
Whether market signals corroborate the move.
Historical volatility
Normal price variability for the material.

Key screens

DashboardMargin at risk, active shocks, and recommendations.
Supplier DirectorySuppliers and reliability.
Material CatalogCategories, canonical materials, and mappings.
WatchlistsMonitored materials and thresholds.
Price ShocksActive shock events with explanations.
RecommendationsPricing changes with formulas.
AlertsNotification center and status.
Data SourcesSource health and import history.
ReportsExportable records and lineage.

Data model

Organization
Supplier
MaterialCategory
CanonicalMaterial
SupplierProduct
PriceObservation
MaterialWatchlist
PriceShockRule
PriceShockEvent
PricingRecommendation
EstimateTemplate
EstimateTemplateLineItem
MarginExposure
NotificationRecipient
NotificationEvent
DataSource
AuditLog

Screens · 9

BidShield AI command center dashboard for a demo roofing company with zeroed margin-at-risk and shock tiles, empty active-shock and recommendation panels, and a 45-day forecasted risk list. — Margin protection command center

BidShield AI forecasts page showing 45-day source-backed price range cards for materials like framing lumber and asphalt shingles, each with a confidence score and drivers. — Material price forecasts

BidShield AI material catalog with sector filter tabs and a table of materials showing category, unit, and synonyms, currently listing agriculture items. — Global material catalog

BidShield AI suppliers page with a directory table of four distributors showing type, US-Midwest region, reliability scores, product counts, and active status. — Supplier directory

BidShield AI materials page listing canonical roofing and construction materials with category tags, default units, supplier counts, and observation counts. — Canonical materials list

BidShield AI price history table of append-only observations showing material, supplier, normalized and raw price, source, and trust tier for each record. — Price history with source lineage

BidShield AI smart watchlists page with two groups — Critical Materials and Market Exposure — tracking materials, categories, and sectors at critical, high, or medium priority. — Smart watchlists

BidShield AI data sources page with summary tiles and provider cards like Buildertrend, Procore, and BLS Producer Price Index, labeled by trust tier and configuration status. — Data source providers

BidShield AI billing settings showing the active Professional plan, usage bars for team members and tracked materials, and Starter, Professional, and Enterprise plan options. — Billing and plan settings

How it is built

A Next.js/React frontend backed by Prisma over PostgreSQL, with detection and ingestion scripts, adapters for economic and commodity data providers, and next-auth (Auth.js) authentication over organization-scoped data.