DeskOS guide: Tender and donor ESG desk

DeskOS gives engineering, environmental and social, and donor advisory firms a free web desk with ten working calculators, a signals list and AI scoring that runs on your own AI key. This guide explains every part and what it does not do.

1. Get your desk

• Go to the DeskOS home page, choose this desk, and enter your firm name, email and country.
• DeskOS emails you a private link. That link is your login: bookmark it and do not share it.
• Lost the link? Use "Email me my desk link" on the home page. If you think someone else has it, open your desk and press "Send me a fresh link": the old one stops working.

2. The ten calculators

Open the Calculators tab. Yellow fields are inputs; results update as you type. Percentages are entered as percentages (15 means 15%). Each result shows the formula it uses.

• T01 Bill of quantities escalation stress test: Base BoQ with material escalation, currency risk and contingency compounded.
• T02 Joint venture qualification check: Combined turnover and lead-partner share against the tender minimums.
• T03 Donor-funded assignment budget: Expert fees, field allowances and reimbursables for a consulting budget.
• T04 Quality and cost based selection (QCBS) score: Combined score from your technical score and your price against the lowest bid.
• T05 Bank guarantee charges: Commission on a bid or performance guarantee for its validity period plus the issuing fee.
• T06 Interim payment after retention: Net payment on an interim certificate after retention and advance recovery.
• T07 Resettlement and land rehabilitation estimate: Compensation and rehabilitation cost with a monitoring allowance on the whole amount.
• T08 Local content share: Local subcontracting and labour as a share of the bid price.
• T09 Key personnel billing net of mobilisation: Billable expert months minus mobilisation, permits and a replacement reserve.
• T10 Liquidated damages exposure: Delay damages after approved extensions, capped at the contract maximum.

The same calculators are in the Excel workbook under Downloads. They are planning estimates: check rates, rules and contract terms for your own jurisdiction before relying on a figure.

3. Signals

Open World Bank procurement notices for your country (your whole region on Pro), refreshed once a day from the World Bank's public notices API. Contract awards are left out.

• Each notice links to its page on the World Bank site, with the procuring organisation, deadline and the contact listed in the notice.
• Notices with a deadline that has passed are not added. Contract awards are not added.
• On Pro, put keywords in Assets and keywords (for example: solar, water, ESIA, supervision) and only notices that mention one of them are added.
• Add your own signals with "Add a signal": a title, the organisation, a deadline, a link and notes.
• Free desks keep up to 25 signals; Pro keeps up to 200. The oldest feed items are removed first; items you added yourself are never removed automatically.

4. AI scoring with your own key

DeskOS does not pay for or supply an AI model. If you add your own key, DeskOS sends the title, organisation, country, type, deadline and your notes of up to ten unscored signals, plus your assets and keywords, to your provider and saves the score (0 to 100), a short reason and a next step it returns. Without a key nothing is scored.

• Google Gemini: Free tier with a Google account. Create a key in Google AI Studio. Sign up: https://aistudio.google.com/app/apikey
• Groq: Free tier. Sign up, then create an API key. Sign up: https://console.groq.com/keys
• OpenRouter: Free models available. Sign up, then create a key. Sign up: https://openrouter.ai/keys
• Paste the key in the AI key tab and press Save, then Test. Your key is stored encrypted and is only used for your own desk. Press Remove at any time to delete it.
• Scores come from the model and can be wrong. Read the notice before acting.

5. Plans

• Free desk ($0): Ten working calculators for your trade, in the browser and as an Excel workbook; A signals list you fill yourself (up to 25 kept); Score signals with your own Gemini, Groq or OpenRouter key, 10 at a time; Tender desk: open World Bank notices for your own country, daily.
• DeskOS Pro ($49 a month): Everything in the free desk, with up to 200 signals kept; Tender desk: World Bank notices for your whole region, filtered by your keywords; Automatic daily scoring of new signals with your own AI key; A daily email when new matching notices arrive; CSV export of your signals.

Pro is bought on Whop. Use the same email address as your desk so it upgrades automatically; DeskOS also emails you a licence key you can paste in the Plan tab. If Pro checkout is not open yet, the Plan tab says so.

6. Your data

• DeskOS stores your firm name, email, country, the signals in your desk, your assets and keywords, and (if you add one) your AI key, encrypted.
• Ask for deletion at any time and your desk and everything in it is deleted.

7. Help

Questions or problems: email deskos@atomicmail.io.