Bid / no-bid checklist for electrical subcontractors
Estimating hours are your scarcest resource — spend them on tenders you can win AND collect on. Fifteen minutes with this framework before any takeoff starts. Free, no sign-up.
Rate each section 1–5 against the rubric below. Nothing you enter is stored or sent anywhere — this runs entirely in your browser.
Score all four sections to get the verdict.
The rubric behind the scores
1 · The documents themselves
Are the electrical drawings coordinated with the specs, or do they contradict each other on gear, fixtures, or scope? Bad documents at tender become disputes after award.
Design completeness: 'issued for tender' sheets full of holds, clouds, and 'TBD' means you're pricing risk, not work. Can you carry enough qualifications to survive it?
Is the enforced code edition named? A package that can't tell you its code basis is a package that will argue with you about it later.
Addenda already stacking up before bid day? Count them. A tender rewritten three times in two weeks will keep being rewritten after award.
2 · Who you'd be working for
Have you been paid — on time, without a fight — by this GC before? Your receivables history with them is better data than any reference.
Is the GC bid-shopping (five covers on the invite list and a reputation for post-bid negotiation)? Your number becomes their leverage.
Owner and funding: public, private, or 'financing being finalized'? Unfunded work gets re-tendered — you'd be estimating for free.
Who else is bidding? If the list is long and the low bidder has been buying work in your market, decide what winning would actually mean.
3 · Fit and capacity
Is this your kind of work, at your kind of size? The job 3x your biggest completed project is a different business, not a bigger version of yours.
Labour: do you have the crews — or the realistic hires — for THIS schedule, alongside what you've already won?
Bonding room: does this job fit inside your aggregate limit with what's outstanding, or does it freeze you out of better work later?
Travel, per diem, remote-site logistics: priced honestly, do you still want it?
4 · Contract terms that should end the conversation
Liquidated damages out of proportion to the contract value, with a schedule you don't control.
Pay-if-paid language in a jurisdiction that enforces it, with an owner you can't assess.
No change-order process you can live with: unit rates forced, overhead/profit capped, or verbal-directive culture.
Onerous supplementary conditions buried in Division 0/1 — read them before you spend estimating hours, not after.
5 · Score it and decide
Score each section 1–5, honestly. Anything scoring 1 in sections 2 or 4 is a no-bid regardless of the total — some risks don't average out.
If it's a borderline bid, name the condition that would flip it ('bid only if the LD cap is negotiated') and put that in your qualifications.
Decide BEFORE the takeoff starts. The worst outcome isn't no-bidding a winner — it's spending two estimating weeks earning the right to lose money.
Keep the scores. Twelve months of bid/no-bid records tells you which GCs and job types actually pay you.
Decided to bid? Review the package before you price it.
Bidprobe reads the tender end to end and reports scope gaps, code-basis questions, RFIs worth sending, and a documented bid/no-bid position with the evidence behind it. Your first review is free. See a complete sample report.