Free Bid and Tender Tools for UK Soft FM Firms
Five free tools for cleaning, security, grounds, waste and catering contractors. Decide whether to bid, check you can pass the SQ, price the labour, then grade your written answers before the buyer does. No signup. Most take under five minutes.
Free AI bid answer grader
Find out what an evaluator would score your answer.
Paste any tender quality answer and the question it responds to. Get a 0 to 5 score against the usual public-sector marking scale, plus the three fixes most likely to lift it.
Best used when you have a draft answer and a few days left before the deadline.
Grade an answer nowMore free tender tools
- 2 min
Bid / no-bid decision matrix
Know in 2 minutes whether to bid
Score a tender on accreditations, turnover, region, capacity, risk and strategic fit. Get a Bid, Borderline or No bid verdict with the reasons behind it.
Best used when a new tender lands and you need a go or no-go before anyone reads 80 pages.
Open tool - 5 min
SQ readiness checker
See which documents you are missing before the SQ
Tick the policies, certificates and references you hold today. Get a readiness score against the Procurement Act 2023 selection stage and a list of gaps to close.
Best used when you are about to bid for your first public contract, or your policies are over a year old.
Open tool - 5 min
TUPE cost estimator
Price the staff you inherit before you price the job
Enter the staff list from the tender pack. Get a Year 1 TUPE cost covering wages, holiday, pension, NI and mobilisation, with a risk band against contract value.
Best used when the buyer has published a TUPE list and you are about to set your price.
Open tool - 3 min
Soft FM staff hours calculator
Get weekly hours and FTE for any site
Industry productivity rates for cleaning, security, grounds, waste and catering. Returns weekly hours, FTE and a loaded labour cost per site.
Best used when the specification gives floor areas or shift patterns but no hours.
Open tool
Which tool do I need?
Pick the stage your bid is at. Most firms skip straight to writing and lose on something they could have caught at stage two or three.
Guides to use alongside the tools
The tools give you a number. These guides tell you what to do with it.
- Bid writing examples that scored well
- How to bid for cleaning contracts
- TUPE rules for soft FM tenders
- Cleaning method statement template
- How to bid for a government contract
- Cleaning tender mistakes that lose marks
- Why security tender bids fail
- What tender documents contain
- How to win grounds maintenance tenders
- Bid writer vs AI bid tool: cost compared
- Browse live UK soft FM tenders
These tools are free. AI Tender Writer Pro does the whole bid.
Finds tenders, checks fit, writes every answer. 14 days free, no card.
Free bid tools: common questions
Are these bid tools really free?
Yes. Every tool on this page runs without an account and without a card. You can use them as often as you like. Some tools let you email the results to yourself, which asks for an email address and nothing else. We built them because the same five questions come up on every soft FM bid, and a spreadsheet you found on a forum is not a good enough answer for a contract worth six figures.
How does the free AI bid answer grader score my answer?
It reads the question and your answer, then marks it against the 0 to 5 scale most UK public buyers use for quality questions. A 3 means acceptable, a 5 means full confidence with evidence. You get the score, a short reason, and three fixes ranked by how many marks they are likely to add. Treat it as a second pair of eyes, not the buyer. Real evaluators follow their own guidance, so a 4 here is a strong sign, not a promise.
Which tool should I use first?
Start with the bid / no-bid decision matrix. Most small soft FM firms lose more money chasing the wrong tenders than losing the right ones. If the verdict is Bid, run the SQ readiness checker next so you are not caught out by a missing policy at the selection stage. Then price with the staff hours calculator and TUPE cost estimator, and grade your written answers last.
Do the tools work for security, grounds, waste and catering as well as cleaning?
Yes. All five tools cover cleaning, security, grounds maintenance, waste and catering. The staff hours calculator uses separate productivity rates for each sector, the bid / no-bid matrix swaps in the right accreditations (SIA ACS for security, for example), and the answer grader works on any quality question regardless of sector.
What is the difference between these tools and AI Tender Writer Pro?
The free tools answer one question at a time and you type in the details yourself. AI Tender Writer Pro does the whole bid: it finds UK public tenders that match your services and region, checks your fit against each one, and writes a first draft of every answer using your own evidence. The 14-day trial needs no card.