Facilities management & cleaning tenders across the public sector

New contracts appear on Find a Tender, with older procurements still surfacing on Contracts Finder and Scottish notices on Public Contracts Scotland. A large share of lower-value council cleaning and grounds work is advertised only on local quoting portals such as ProContract, which is why a tool that scans all of these sources daily matters.

Not always. Frameworks and dynamic markets are common for larger and bundled FM contracts, but plenty of cleaning, grounds and maintenance work is still let through standalone tenders and below-threshold quotes. BidSquirrel flags which route each opportunity uses and checks whether you meet any requirement before you bid.

When a public contract changes hands, the staff currently delivering it usually transfer to the new provider under TUPE on their existing terms. Buyers expect a clear plan for taking on and managing those staff, so your bid needs to address workforce, mobilisation and continuity directly to score well.

FM and cleaning tenders are scored on mobilisation, TUPE handling, quality monitoring and social value, and the marks come from your own operational detail rather than a writer's prose. An outside bid writer cannot supply your staffing plan or your local social-value commitments. BidSquirrel builds the full draft with you from your own evidence - drafting each answer to the criteria, scoring its own draft like the panel, refining where your TUPE or mobilisation narrative is thin and stripping out the generic prose - then hands it back with the exact facts for you to confirm. You keep ownership of the bid and usually spend less than hiring a writer.

Total facilities management bundles several services - typically cleaning, building maintenance, grounds, security and sometimes catering - into one contract across a whole estate, usually higher in value and longer, often three to seven years. Buyers use TFM to hold a single provider accountable for the entire site. A smaller firm rarely bids for a full TFM alone, but frequently wins a single-service lot within one, or joins a consortium as the specialist partner. BidSquirrel flags whether a notice is single-service, bundled soft FM or full TFM, so you chase the lots you can actually deliver.

A large share of recurring FM and cleaning work is called off through national and regional frameworks and dynamic markets rather than open tenders. The buying organisations worth knowing include Crown Commercial Service (CCS) FM frameworks, NHS Shared Business Services, ESPO, YPO and Fusion21, alongside regional consortia. Getting onto the right framework, while bidding open tenders in parallel, is how an SME builds a steady public-sector pipeline. BidSquirrel surfaces both framework opportunities and standalone tenders and checks whether you meet each one's requirements before you bid.

Public FM contracts are awarded on the most advantageous tender under section 19 of the Procurement Act 2023: quality is scored against a published methodology and weighting, not on price alone. Price is commonly 30 to 40 per cent of the marks, with the rest split across quality and service delivery, mobilisation and TUPE, and social value. Evaluators mark each answer against the criterion in front of them, so strong operational detail written into the wrong section earns nothing. BidSquirrel drafts each answer to the criterion it will be scored on and stress-tests it the way the panel would before you submit.

Many consultancies offer FM bid writing, but the marks in an FM tender come from your own mobilisation plan, TUPE handling, quality-monitoring regime and local social-value commitments - detail an outside writer cannot invent. BidSquirrel works as your FM bid service from the other direction: it builds the full draft with you from your own evidence, drafts each answer to the published criteria, scores its own draft like the panel, refines the thin sections and hands it back for you to confirm and own - usually for less than outsourcing a single bid, with the bid still yours.

Hard FM covers the building's fabric and engineering - mechanical and electrical services, heating, fire and statutory compliance, and planned and reactive maintenance. Soft FM covers the people-facing services that keep a building usable - cleaning, grounds, security, waste, reception and sometimes catering. A tender may buy one, the other, or bundle both into a total FM contract, and each is often a separate lot with its own eligibility gates and scoring. Knowing which lot fits your firm before you commit a day to the bid is exactly the triage BidSquirrel runs for you.

Terms vary, but daily cleaning and single-service FM contracts commonly run three to five years, total FM deals are often longer, and many include optional extension periods. Values range from a single-site council quote worth a few thousand pounds up to estate-wide contracts worth millions over their life. Because the work recurs on predictable cycles, an organised firm can see re-tenders coming. BidSquirrel tracks live notices and their stated values across every major GB source so you can plan which cycles to target.