Case Study
From 4 Days to 30 Minutes: How FOIL built Amey’s AI-powered knowledge engine
Transforming bid writing through intelligent knowledge management – and building the capability for Amey to own forever
The challenge
Leading UK infrastructure service provider, Amey, has vast experience managing complex assets - it is their greatest competitive advantage and biggest bottleneck.
Writing and winning bids is fundamental to their future success. But expertise is held in vast numbers of documents. How do you capture it, leverage it, and make it accessible?
Amey’s vision demanded something far more sophisticated having tried to use Copilot Studio. They needed to transform large amounts of knowledge into strategic advantage – and build the internal capability to sustain it.
4+ days to draft comprehensive short responses
Critical expertise locked in individual silos across the organisation
Inconsistent quality depending on which team members were available
Knowledge walking out the door when consultants or employees moved on
Generic AI tools couldn't understand Amey's unique context and expertise
"We have this vast, deep experience of how we manage assets for our clients. What if you could bring together all of that knowledge and make it searchable and instantaneous?"
Rob Curley, Project Director, Amey
Our approach
Why Amey chose FOIL
Amey needed a partner who understood their business need for enterprise data transformation - more than just building and deploying technology.
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We started by understanding the real problem Amey was solving, not just the technology they wanted to deploy.
"At FOIL we always consider the bigger strategy. There's no point in building something that's not solving a problem."
— Molly Bland, Lead Engineer
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From day one, FOIL worked alongside Amey's bid writers and development teams – coaching, collaborating, and building capability together.
"From the get-go with Amey, they had everyone involved – bid writers, development team. Everyone really was on board with what we were doing, and we pair programmed to ensure the developers in Amey could adopt the tool long term easily."
— Molly Bland, Lead Engineer
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The AI landscape evolves weekly. FOIL's deep partnerships with Microsoft and expertise in generative AI meant Amey always had access to the latest capabilities.
"One of the brilliant things about working with FOIL was that their finger was on the pulse with the changing technology. We'd encounter problems early on, wait a couple of weeks, and FOIL would go, 'Hey, guess what? They've just released a beta version of that tool, and we're going to apply it now and that problem's gone away.'"
— Rob Curley, Project Director, Amey
The solution
Starting at Microsoft's AI Labs in Munich, FOIL designed and built Gennie – a sophisticated generative AI knowledge platform.
Gennie represents sophisticated AI architecture that understands context, maintains consistency, and produces genuinely valuable outputs that match Amey's standards.
How Gennie works:
Intelligent Knowledge Architecture that ingests Amey’s top-scoring documentation, feedback and expert insights to create a contextually intelligent repository and explore Amey’s unique expertise, voice and winning approach.
Advanced Generative AI to produce scope analyses that identifies key requirements, opportunities, generates client tailored answer plans and content drafts that genuinely speak like Amey experts.
Orchestrated Integration to seamlessly connect with Amey’s existing Microsoft ecosystem, bring tacit knowledge directly into the context of client problems and maintain the human oversight, while automating repetitive tasks
Gennie - An Intelligent Knowledge Engine
"We're kind of breaking the mould a bit with what's possible with AI. Even Microsoft is still experimenting with these things."
Molly Bland
FOIL, Project Lead Engineer
"One of the brilliant things about working with FOIL was that their finger was on the pulse with the changing technology. We'd encounter problems, and FOIL would go, 'Hey, guess what? They've just released a beta version of that tool, we'll apply it now."
Rob Curley, Project Director, Amey
The results
Efficiency, Quality, and Permanent Capability
95% Time Reduction
Tasks that previously required 4 days now complete in 30 minutes – freeing senior talent for strategic, high-value work.
Democratised Expertise
Every bid writer can now leverage Amey's collective intelligence. Best practices and proven approaches that were previously locked in individual silos are accessible to everyone.
80% Content Automation
Gennie could handle the majority of initial tender drafting, including scope analysis, answer planning, and contextualised content creation.
Strategic Focus
Amey’s experts can spend their time on what actually wins work: interviewing experts, extracting innovative solutions, and adding genuine differentiators.
100% Knowledge Retention
Expertise stays permanently accessible within Amey's organisation, creating sustainable competitive advantage that grows stronger with each project.
Human-Centric Innovation
The AI handles repetitive tasks, enabling teams to focus on bold, creative problem-solving.
"We're human-centric now and AI is enabling that, which means we have more time to be bold, creative and innovative, and we can solve even higher complex problems."
Rob Curley, Project Director, Amey
Key Takeaways for Leaders
1. Data is your biggest asset, if you can access it Amey's many documents represented massive potential value. The challenge wasn't having the data – it was making it usable.
2. Standard AI tools won't solve complex enterprise challenges Off-the-shelf solutions lack the sophistication to understand your unique context, expertise, and requirements.
3. True transformation requires partnership, not vendors Building sustainable capability demands collaborators who embed with your teams and transfer knowledge, not create dependency.
4. Innovation is incremental and ongoing The technology landscape evolves rapidly. Success comes from partners who stay ahead of the curve and build foundations that can evolve with you.