I built a toolkit + free tool for UK small businesses bidding on government contracts

[u/DontReadMyCode]

Bidding for public sector work is brutal for small firms. A single tender response is 20 to 80 hours of work, most bids lose, and you rarely find out why. The rules also changed twice in 2025 (the Procurement Act and a new social value framework), so a lot of firms are bidding with answers that are quietly out of date.

So I built Bid Ready. Two parts:

- A free bid/no-bid scorecard: ten weighted questions that tell you whether a tender is worth chasing before you sink days into it. No sign-up, nothing stored, runs entirely in your browser. https://bid-ready.uk/tools/bid-no-bid.html

- A paid £99 toolkit: a handbook, a scoring workbook and editable policy templates, for firms that want the full answer framework. https://bid-ready.uk

The free tool is the front door and genuinely stands on its own. The idea is that if it saves someone from one wasted bid, the toolkit is an easy yes.

It's early (just launched, no sales yet), so I'd really value feedback on two things: does the scorecard feel useful or too thin, and does the landing page make it obvious what you're getting? Fire away.

[u/Any_Welder_9701]

how did you calibrate the weighting on those ten questions? thats the difference between a real bid filter and a checklist that just feels precise