The slop problem
Every AI tender tool now promises a one-click bid, and the drafts do look tailored - they drop in your sector, your case studies, your certifications. But underneath they are assembled from the same generic patterns, so they come out the same way every time: fluent, padded and bland. They tell the buyer you are "committed to excellence" and that you will "leverage your extensive experience", and they read like every other auto-drafted bid on the evaluator's desk that week.
And the people scoring your bid are people. Public contracts are awarded by human panels, and those panels are getting quicker at spotting generated prose. They mark it the way generic answers have always been marked: down.
Public work is won on specifics. The job you did three miles from the depot. The problem you solved that the spec didn't see coming. The fact that the person writing the method statement is the one who'll be on site. Those win - and they live in your evidence, not in a model's patterns.
A bid built from generic patterns is quick to write and quick to lose.
So we build bids the other way round: from your evidence first, with the generic prose stripped out. Here is what that wins you.
When every bid sounds the same, the one that doesn't wins
Every month more of your competitors submit AI-drafted answers, and every month those answers converge on the same beige average. For you, that is an opening.
An evaluator who has just read six interchangeable, machine-smooth submissions will remember the seventh: the one with specific, checkable evidence only the firm that did the work could give. That is the bid our system builds for you - drafted from your own track record and stress-tested until the generic prose is gone. The more your rivals automate their words into the same average, the more a bid built on your real evidence stands out, and the more you win.
You win on what only you can prove
When a bid is generated from generic patterns, you hand over the decisions that actually win work: which of your strengths to lead with, which contract to put front and centre, where you beat the firm down the road. A model guesses at those. You know them - you earned them.
So our build keeps them yours. It assembles each answer from your own evidence - your wins, your people, your certifications - flags anything it can't evidence for you to confirm, and leaves the final call to you. The draft is the heavy lifting, done from your facts. The judgement stays yours, and the bid is one only your firm could have submitted.
So what do we actually do?
We point AI at the job it genuinely beats a human on: reading tens of thousands of notices so you don't have to. And it is not a general-purpose chatbot - it is built and regression-tested as a UK procurement specialist, reading each tender under the right regime and applying the discipline of a real evaluation panel.
Every day we ingest major GB public-sector sources, from the national portals down to the low-value local-authority work most tools never see, and score each opportunity against your business - your trades, your patch, your certifications, your turnover, your track record. Strong, Fair or Development, with the reasoning written down, not a black-box number.
Then we help you win the ones that matter: who won similar contracts and for how much, what the buyer actually cares about, where you are strong against the criteria, what is likely to trip you up, and when the contracts you want come up for renewal - so you are in the conversation before the tender even drops.
Then we build the full draft with you. The system works out which regime applies, recalls your Evidence Vault - the insurances, accreditations, case studies and standard SQ / PSQ answers you bank once - and drafts each answer from what is genuinely yours, never fabricated. It marks its own draft against the criteria like the panel will, refines the weak sections, and strips out the generic prose a panel would mark down. Anything it can't evidence, it flags for you to confirm rather than inventing. The drafting is ours; the evidence, the judgement and the final call stay yours.
And then we help you price it - the part every other tool leaves you to guess at, even though price and value-for-money can be most of the score. It builds a costed breakdown from the scope, line by line, on your own rates or clearly-labelled estimates; recommends a price band that weighs your odds against your margin; lets you test the price against the tender's own scoring formula; and writes the value-for-money case for the most-advantageous bid, not just the cheapest. It reads recent comparable awards to sense-check the band, but it never hands you a single oracle number or claims a market rate. You price to win, with the working shown - and you own every figure.
Find the work worth winning. Win more of it. Price it to win. Waste less time doing it.
The principle
Humans buy from humans. A bid is your business making its case to another person, and the moment that becomes one machine writing to another, the exercise is theatre - and it loses.
So that is the line we drew. We find the work worth winning, tell you why it is winnable, and build the draft with you from your own evidence - but the evidence, the judgement and the final call stay yours. We won't put generic, machine-written words in your name.
It's your business. Win on it.
Who we are
BidSquirrel is built and run by Tom White, founder of Orcana Ltd. Tom built it after seeing how much good public-sector work never reaches the small firms best placed to deliver it - not because they can't do the job, but because they never see the opportunity in time, or don't have the resource to bid for it well.
We scan the major GB procurement portals every day, including Find a Tender, Contracts Finder, Public Contracts Scotland and the ProContract council portals, and score every opportunity against your business. Registered office: Beverley Road, Hull, HU6 7JN, United Kingdom.
Questions, ideas, or just want to talk tenders? Email hello@bidsquirrel.co.uk or find us on LinkedIn.
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