01How a grade happens
Three steps sit behind every grade:
- Read and classified. Every tender published to the public contracts feeds is read once and sorted — what kind of work it is, which sector, what it requires.
- Matched against your profile. We line it up against what you do, where you work, your track record, and the things you've told us aren't for you.
- Judged, then analysed. A fast local judge decides whether a tender is worth a full analysis. The ones that clear that bar get a full BidHound analysis against your profile — and every tender you see in BidHound has been through that full analysis. Nothing reaches your feed on a keyword match alone.
02What the letters mean
A grade comes from a fixed bar, not a daily line-up — every tender is scored on its own, and that score is checked against the same cut-offs every time. Those cut-offs were set once, from the overall spread of scores across the whole market, and they're never reshuffled by whatever else happens to be in your feed. An A is rare on purpose: most tenders genuinely aren't for you, and a grader that called everything a B would waste your time.
A grade is made from the tender notice first. When the full documents are available, they confirm or correct that first read — and you'll always see which of the two you're looking at.
If a tender carries a mandatory requirement you don't meet — an accreditation you don't hold, a minimum turnover you're under — that caps the grade at C+ however strong the fit is otherwise, with a note saying what would lift it. Where a requirement looks like it might accept an equivalent, we flag it rather than quietly ruling you out.
03When grades change — and why you'll always see it
Grades aren't frozen in amber, but they don't move quietly either.
When the full documents arrive and change a grade, we show the old letter struck through beside the new one, so you can see what changed and why. No silent edits.
And a grade you've already acted on — once a tender is in your pipeline — doesn't move under your feet. We hold the letter you saw when you decided to pursue it, so your decision rests on the grade you actually made it on, not a later revision.
04How to correct us
The grader learns from you. Three controls feed it, and here's what each one actually does:
- “Not for us — train the hound” (dismiss). That tender leaves your feed immediately and never comes back — even republished under a new reference. Tell us why in the box that appears and your reason becomes a plain-English learning you can see and edit in Settings; the judges follow it from the very next scan. Keep dismissing the same buyer or the same kind of work and those drop down too.
- What you pursue, win and lose. Moving a tender into preparation, submitting, winning or losing all teach us what good looks like for your business — buyers and sectors you actually pursue score higher, and your wins and losses shape the judges' view of you. Keep losing to the same buyer and we gently temper their future tenders — one loss never moves a score, and a win with that buyer resets it.
- Exclusions in Settings. Your “not a fit for” list — add to it and your feed re-scores overnight.
All three feed the same place: the judges that decide what reaches you next time.
05Honesty notes
Every week we re-check a sample of the tenders the gate hid, looking for good ones it buried by mistake — so our misses stay visible to us, not just to you.
A grade is our best read of how well a tender fits your business, meant to help you prioritise — it's judgment applied consistently, and the decision to bid is always yours. For the terms that govern using BidHound, see our Terms of Service; for how we handle your data, our Privacy Policy and Security page.