The Bid/No-Bid Checklist

Deciding

Question 1 — Deadline and submission

What is the exact due date, time, and time zone? How and where must the response be submitted — portal, email, paper? What does 'late' mean here (it almost always means rejected, unread)? If you cannot submit complete by that moment with a day to spare for problems, the answer is no, and it's an easy no.

Write the deadline in your calendar the day you find the posting, not the week it closes — postings with short windows are common in service work.

Question 2 — Eligibility

List everything the buyer requires before award: licenses, insurance minimums, certifications, set-aside status, specific registrations, background checks. For each: have it, can get it honestly in time, or don't have it. One hard 'don't have it' ends the evaluation — and that's the checklist doing its job, not wasting your time.

Insurance deserves a special look on services work: if the posting requires coverage you don't carry yet, the time to learn the cost is now, not after you've priced the job.

Question 3 — The work itself

Is this one clear scope you can perform with your real crew, equipment, and area — inside the stated window? Watch for multi-scope projects wearing a simple costume, distances that eat your margin in drive time, and schedules that collide with work you've already promised.

Score against your worst week, not your best. A contract that only works when nothing goes wrong will, eventually, meet the week where something does.

Question 4 — The money

Price it roughly before you commit to pricing it fully: labor, materials, overhead, margin. Does a defensible number clear break-even with room to survive a bad week? How and when does this buyer pay — net terms that strain a small company's cash are a real cost, and they belong in the decision.

If the buyer's prior awards are public, look at what this work went for last time. You're not obliged to match it — you're obliged to know it.

Question 5 — The traps

Read once more specifically for disqualifiers: a mandatory pre-bid site visit (miss it and you may not submit at all), required forms named in an attachment, addenda that changed the scope, submission formats that reject the wrong file type. Traps are rarely hidden maliciously — they're hidden in plain sight, on page nine.

• Deadline verified, in the calendar, with time zone
• Every eligibility item: have it / gettable / disqualifier
• Scope fits crew, area, and calendar — on a bad week
• Rough price clears break-even with margin
• Site visits, forms, and addenda all accounted for

Scoring it, and living by the score

Give each question a pass, a caution, or a fail. Any fail: pass, and write down why. Cautions: decide what would have to be true to proceed, and verify it before pricing. All passes: bid it with your full attention — the checklist just told you this one deserves it.

Keep the scored sheets. In ninety days they'll show you your real market: which buyers post work that fits you, which scopes recur, and where your pricing stands. That's market intelligence you built by deciding, not by guessing.