FIELD NOTE · DOCUMENT CHECK
When a contract document contradicts itself
A contract document's own printed figures can fail to add up to each other — the product flags it and does not say which one is wrong.
- What it reads
- Every dollar figure printed on the pages of a document we read, scanned deterministically.
- What triggers it
- The arithmetic the printed figures assert does not hold, or a figure printed on the page is not accounted for by that arithmetic.
- What it needs from you
- Nothing. It fires on documents nobody has verified yet — that is the point.
The exhibits
Three exhibits, in the order the check assembles them. The last one does not resolve anything — that is the point.
Page 1 — the award
Bid amount and bond, printing a total of $1,867,788.00.
Bid plus bond adds to the letter's own printed total, to the cent.
| Bid Amount | $1,842,000.00Illustrative figure |
| Bond (1.4%) | $25,788.00Illustrative figure |
| Total amount of this approval | $1,867,788.00Illustrative figureas printed |
Page 2 — pending commitments
Four commitments not included in the award, printing a subtotal of $405,465.00.
The four lines add to the letter's own printed subtotal, to the cent.
| Cab interior finish upgrade | $184,500.00Illustrative figure |
| Hoistway pressurization coordination | $96,300.00Illustrative figure |
| Extended maintenance term (24 months beyond base) | $71,450.00Illustrative figure |
| Temporary use of car #2 for construction hoisting | $53,215.00Illustrative figure |
| Subtotal Pending Commitments | $405,465.00Illustrative figureas printed |
The letter's own total
The award plus the pending subtotal is $2,273,253.00. The letter prints $2,741,600.00 instead.
The gap is $468,347.00, and it is not explained by anything else printed on either page.
The ladder stops here too. A mismatch is not a verdict.
The check, in full
Every sum in the letter closes to the cent except the total the letter prints for itself.
| Page 1 · The award | |
|---|---|
| Bid Amount | $1,842,000.00Illustrative figure |
| Bond (1.4%) | $25,788.00Illustrative figure |
| Total amount of this approval | $1,867,788.00Illustrative figureas printed |
| Page 2 · Pending commitments — not included in the award | |
| Cab interior finish upgrade | $184,500.00Illustrative figure |
| Hoistway pressurization coordination | $96,300.00Illustrative figure |
| Extended maintenance term (24 months beyond base) | $71,450.00Illustrative figure |
| Temporary use of car #2 for construction hoisting | $53,215.00Illustrative figure |
| Subtotal Pending Commitments | $405,465.00Illustrative figureas printed |
| The award, plus the pending subtotal | $2,273,253.00Illustrative figurederived |
| The total printed on page 2 | $2,741,600.00Illustrative figureas printed |
| $468,347.00Illustrative figure unaccounted for | |
- When a document is read, every dollar figure printed on the pages we read is scanned deterministically.
- When the arithmetic the extracted figures assert does not hold — or a figure printed on the page is not accounted for by that arithmetic — a warning is recorded against the document.
- A warning raises one alert per document per kind of discrepancy.
- It fires on documents nobody has verified yet. That is deliberate: the alert exists to reach the rep who has not opened the file.
What does NOT trigger it
- An informational note — those are recorded and never raise an alert.
- A document whose figures agree.
- Anything on a page the extraction did not read — the record says "not checked," never "consistent."
This is a deterministic check — the same inputs produce the same result every time. No model decides it.
What this does not do
- It does not decide
- It puts the two figures side by side. It does not tell you which one is right, and it will not.
- The blind spot
- It can show you that two figures do not add up. It cannot tell you which figure is the bid and which is the bond — those are words the document's author chose, and a deterministic check does not read intent. A document whose numbers happen to reconcile under the wrong labels will pass this check. That is why nothing here is a verdict.
- The precondition
- It only checks the pages we actually read. A figure on a page outside that range is not checked — the record says so, never "consistent."
- No score
- There is no confidence percentage anywhere in this, because a number shaped like evidence is not evidence.
Your call
One of these is wrong. We are not going to guess which.
What the rep does next
The owner's rep asks the GC which of the letter's own totals its accounting department would stand behind, before either figure is relied on for anything downstream.