Formulating an appropriate research methodology is a difficult but crucial stage in the research process. The purpose of this paper is to formulate an appropriate research methodology for investigating and developing an artificial intelligence (AI) based bid automation model for construction firms. This research design is intended to be adaptable and replicable across diverse construction industry applications, particularly where the study seeks to investigate issues around digitalization and develop digital solutions for the construction industry. A critical literature review of 21 purposively selected relevant articles was carried out to assess previous methodologies used in other related studies while considering their limitations. Findings from the literature review, including limitations in previous studies, guided the development of the mixed research methodology (quantitative and qualitative) presented in this research. The methodology proposes both a case study with semi-structured interviews and a questionnaire survey strategy for data collection to comprehensively assist in developing an empirically based bid automation model that appropriately reflects real-life processes in bid preparation and is designed to minimize human input in the bid preparation process. Such a tool will be particularly useful in times/seasons when firms have a high volume of bids to prepare within short bidding timeframes, with limited human resources, and it is beneficial to draw on historical information from previous projects. This paper contributes to knowledge by presenting an appropriate research methodology for a specific problem in the construction discipline, providing a guide for future researchers in formulating or selecting methodologies for similar studies.