Material Intelligence
Material Intelligence provides analytical insights into material usage, pricing trends, price history, and risk signals across Darwin estimates. It transforms material lines, price list history, and project baseline state into read-only portfolio intelligence for estimators, procurement teams, and cost leaders.
Material Intelligence is exposed under Catalog → Materials as the Intelligence and Risk Signals tabs, with per-material drill-down through the Material Detail drawer.
Read-Only Surface
Section titled “Read-Only Surface”Material Intelligence is a read-only analytical surface. It does not write to modules, materials, price lists, estimations, or approvals. The only permitted actions are navigation links into existing workflows such as the material catalog editor, price list editor, Usage tab, or Price History tab.
Key Capabilities
Section titled “Key Capabilities”Confirm the Scope
Section titled “Confirm the Scope”Choose approved, not-approved, or all estimates and check the displayed scope. Approved uses the active baseline’s estimate, including preliminary baselines; reverted or superseded approvals are excluded. Other views can include several alternatives for the same project without deduplicating them.
Currency filters lines; it does not convert them. A mixed-currency scope requires choosing one currency before reading a total. Price movement compares lists in the same copy lineage: one list or unrelated lineages produce Not measurable movement.
Material Exposure Overview
Section titled “Material Exposure Overview”Dashboard-level KPIs include:
| KPI | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Total material exposure | Sum of quantity multiplied by the estimate-used material unit price |
| Materials used | Distinct materials count |
| Materials needing attention | Count of materials with risk signals |
| Stale prices | Materials past the stale price threshold (90 days) |
| Missing prices | Materials with missing or zero estimate price |
| Modules with bid-rate divergence | Separate count of modules whose comparable bids differ from estimated cost |
| Average price movement | Mean lineage-based percentage-point movement |
The High Price Movement card can currently be blank because it receives no count. Use the movement signals to inspect affected materials; a blank card does not mean zero cases.
Top Materials Ranking
Section titled “Top Materials Ranking”Materials can be ranked by estimated value, quantity, project count, estimate count, module count, price movement, or risk score — a composite score from exposure, movement, staleness, and missing price.
Usage Details
Section titled “Usage Details”For a selected material, the drawer shows usage summary (total quantity, estimated value, project/estimate/module counts), project usage (project, estimation, quantity, unit price, price list), and module usage (module, quantity per module, times used).
Price History
Section titled “Price History”A chronological price history for each material — recorded date, unit price, currency, source type, and origin note.
Risk Signals
Section titled “Risk Signals”The Risk Signals surface calls out materials needing attention. Signal types include:
| Signal | Risk Level | Trigger |
|---|---|---|
| Missing Price | High | Estimate line has missing or zero price, or material has no known price record |
| Stale Price | Medium/High | Days since the most recent recorded price exceeds 90 |
| High Price Movement | Medium/High | Lineage-based movement exceeds 10 percentage points |
| High Exposure | Medium/High | Material is among the highest-exposure materials in scope |
| Bid Rate Divergence | Medium from 15%; High from 30% | At least three comparable bids in one currency show a meaningful difference from module cost |
Missing and stale prices lead to price lists; movement and exposure lead to material history or usage. Make corrections in the owning workflow. Missing Source and Unit Mismatch labels do not yet correspond to signals produced by this query, and the Inferred column is not currently populated.
Bid divergence belongs to the module because a subcontract quote bundles several costs. It changes no prices. Those rows’ module navigation is not correctly wired in the current table: open the module from the catalog and inspect its Learning tab instead. Do not treat that row click as proof you opened the correct module.
Tags identify pricing data needing review; they do not grade a material’s physical quality. Inspect each signal’s threshold and currency scope before drawing conclusions.
Risk Score
Section titled “Risk Score”Each material receives a composite risk score from 0 to 100 based on missing price status (automatic 100), cost exposure (weight up to 60), price movement (weight up to 25), and staleness (weight up to 15).
Workflow Role
Section titled “Workflow Role”- During estimation, materials are assigned quantities and prices
- Material Intelligence analyzes active baseline and scenario material exposure
- Risk Signals surface stale, missing, volatile, and high-exposure materials
- Users follow fix paths into existing workflows
- Usage insights inform module standardization, catalog cleanup, and procurement focus