Book a demo
Blog

Notes on winning public work

What actually disqualifies a bid, how to decide which tenders are worth chasing, and how public buyers across the United States structure the work they put out.

Book a demo
An Offra card for Public procurement
Public procurement

Small business did not lose the money. It lost the growth.

Federal set-aside dollars rose 8% while total contracting rose 40%. The reserved share held through year one, broke in year two, and halved in construction.

Read 8 min read
An Offra card for Product
Product

What's new in Offra: a free first bid, a bid/no-bid checklist and a due date on every task

A free first bid on the full Business plan, a bid/no-bid checklist, deadline reminders and a due date on every task: this week's changes to Offra, and why.

Read 14 min read
An Offra card for Product
Product

Why Offra drafts your bid answers but never your price

Offra writes the answer to a bid task from the tender, your knowledge base and the web. It leaves blanks for what only you decide, and never writes your price.

Read 8 min read
An Offra card for Product
Product

Why pasting the tender into ChatGPT is not a compliance matrix

One prompt over a 200-page tender returns a summary, not a compliance matrix. How Offra reads it in pieces, checks every quote, and says what it could not find.

Read 13 min read
An Offra card for Compliance
Compliance

Brand name or equal: why equals get rejected

An equal product is judged only on what your offer shows. Most rejected equals would have met the requirement. The offer simply never proved it, line by line.

Read 4 min read
An Offra card for Public procurement
Public procurement

A Sources Sought notice is the bid before the bid

Nothing is awarded from a Sources Sought notice, which is why most firms skip it. The answers decide who the solicitation that follows is written for.

Read 4 min read
An Offra card for Product
Product

The package moved after you read it

Closing dates move, amendments land, a Sources Sought becomes a solicitation. What Offra records when a public notice changes, and how to be told for free.

Read 4 min read
An Offra card for Public procurement
Public procurement

The aid stopped first. The wall came second.

USAID obligated $4M in the four months after the inauguration, against $1.9B a year earlier. The border money did not arrive for another eighteen months.

Read 8 min read
An Offra card for Public procurement
Public procurement

Homeland Security's construction spending grew 35× in two years

DHS went from $431M of federal construction obligations to $15.3B. A contractor outside the top 100 two years ago is now its fifth-largest supplier overall.

Read 5 min read
An Offra card for Product
Product

The states Offra covers, and the ones coming next

Every federal, state and metro source behind Offra's tender portal, what each one can actually tell a bidder, and the states where coverage grows next.

Read 6 min read
An Offra card for Product
Product

What the free tender portal shows, and what it does not

Every open US solicitation Offra tracks is browsable with no account and no card. What that covers, and the line where the paid product actually starts.

Read 4 min read
An Offra card for Estimating
Estimating

The wage determination is part of your estimate

It arrives as an attachment and gets treated as one. It is a binding price list for labor, and it will not match the rates in your estimating system on its own.

Read 3 min read
An Offra card for Product
Product

Why Offra shows you what it is unsure about

A tool that hides its uncertainty is asking to be trusted where it should not be. Every extraction carries a source and a confidence, and both are shown on purpose.

Read 3 min read
An Offra card for Public procurement
Public procurement

The NAICS code is doing more than describing the work

It looks like filing. It is the switch deciding whether your firm counts as small for this solicitation, and it carries an appeal window most bidders never use.

Read 3 min read
An Offra card for Compliance
Compliance

The five documents that sink a public tender

Most disqualified bids are not lost on price. They are lost on a missing form, an unsigned page, or an addendum nobody acknowledged. Here are the five that come up most.

Read 3 min read
An Offra card for Public procurement
Public procurement

What a set-aside actually excludes

The set-aside line is the one thing in a solicitation that can end your interest before you read anything else. Most teams check it after the scope, not before.

Read 3 min read
An Offra card for Bidding strategy
Bidding strategy

Making the bid/no-bid call in twenty minutes

Bid-writing capacity is the scarcest resource in any firm that bids. A short, honest triage on day one protects it better than any amount of effort in week three.

Read 3 min read
An Offra card for Compliance
Compliance

Registered in SAM.gov is not one thing

Being registered sounds like one binary state. It is four, kept on four different clocks, and most teams learn which one lapsed at the worst possible moment.

Read 4 min read
An Offra card for Bidding strategy
Bidding strategy

When the subcontractor quotes arrive last

Sub quotes land in the final hours and always will. The fix is not chasing them earlier — it is structuring the estimate so a late quote drops into a prepared slot.

Read 3 min read
An Offra card for Public procurement
Public procurement

How a weighted evaluation grid scores you

When quality is scored separately from price, the lowest bid stops winning automatically. What the committee is actually permitted to reward, and what it cannot.

Read 3 min read
An Offra card for Compliance
Compliance

The dates in a tender that are not the deadline

Every bid team tracks the closing date. The dates that actually constrain a bid are the four or five before it, and they are rarely on anyone's calendar.

Read 3 min read
An Offra card for Estimating
Estimating

The quantities to re-check before you price

There is never time to re-measure a takeoff before close. There is always time to re-check five categories of quantity that go wrong far more often than the rest.

Read 3 min read
An Offra card for Public procurement
Public procurement

Bidding across the border

Canadian firms bidding US public work usually over-prepare for the wrong differences. What actually changes, what does not, and where the lead time really goes.

Read 4 min read
An Offra card for Estimating
Estimating

When the drawings and the specifications disagree

Every tender set contains contradictions. The order of precedence decides who absorbs them, and it is written down somewhere most estimators never look.

Read 3 min read
An Offra card for Bidding strategy
Bidding strategy

What to ask for in a bid debrief

A debrief is the cheapest competitive research a firm can buy, and most never request one. Four questions worth asking, and what the answers are actually for.

Read 3 min read
An Offra card for Compliance
Compliance

Bid security: the four ways it gets rejected

Bid security fails on the amount, the form, the validity period, or the delivery. Each fails independently, and all four land in the last hour before close.

Read 3 min read
An Offra card for Bidding strategy
Bidding strategy

Unit prices, lump sums, and where the risk sits

Whether a tender is priced by unit rate or as a lump sum is not a formatting choice. It decides who absorbs a quantity that turns out to be wrong.

Read 3 min read
An Offra card for Public procurement
Public procurement

How to read instructions to bidders

The scope tells you what the job is. The instructions to bidders tell you how to stay in the running long enough to price it. Most teams read them in that order.

Read 3 min read
An Offra card for Estimating
Estimating

What an addendum actually changes in your estimate

An addendum changes the work and the paperwork at the same time. Repricing the line items it names is the easy half — here is the half that gets missed.

Read 3 min read
An Offra card for Public procurement
Public procurement

RFP, RFQ, IFB: what each one is asking for

Three acronyms, three different competitions. Which one you are answering decides how the award is made — and what a strong response actually contains.

Read 4 min read
An Offra card for Product
Product

Your first ten minutes in Offra

Account setup, the guided tour, a first tender uploaded and a task list that knows what is missing — what those ten minutes hold, plan gates included.

Read 7 min read

30 / 30 posts shown

Ready when you are

Win more public tenders, with a fraction of the effort.

Upload your first tender and get a review-ready checklist of requirements, gaps and deadlines in minutes.

Start free Book your demo

Free account, no card. Add a card when you run your first bid — you're not charged.