Helping small local firms find and bid for UK public-sector contracts
I designed and built a platform, live and in active testing, that reads the official UK public-tender feeds every 30 minutes, matches small local firms to contracts that fit them, and helps them team up and draft a first bid, in English, Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese.
- Sector
- UK public-sector procurement for small businesses and trades
- Stack
- NestJS, Postgres, Next.js, Stripe
- Status
- Live, in active testing
The problem
Public bodies want to buy from small local firms, but the notices are spread across two government feeds, written in procurement language, and often too big for one small business to deliver alone.
Most small firms never look.
What I did
I built the platform end to end. It reads both official feeds through their published data format (no scraping), merges duplicates and sorts each notice by trade, region, value and deadline.
A firm uploads anything about itself, and the system works out its profile, then lists the tenders that fit with the reasons why. If a firm can't deliver alone, it suggests other listed firms that fill the gap.
"Draft my bid" writes a first draft from the firm's own profile and lists what it couldn't support. It never writes a price and never submits anything. Each task can be set to manual, assist or auto, but anything that saves, sends or commits always needs a person. Every AI action is logged and can be undone. Alerts go out by email or WhatsApp with consent and an opt-out.
Tools and stack, in plain words
A NestJS API with Postgres full-text search, a server-rendered Next.js site with separate English, Hong Kong Chinese and Simplified Chinese pages, Stripe for the paid plan, and structured data and sitemaps validated automatically after every deploy.
Outcome
Live and in active testing, with a free plan and a paid plan. A process that meant visiting two government sites and reading long notices became a daily list of matched tenders with plain-English summaries.
What it shows about how I work
I use official data sources over scraping, I keep AI in a lane the user chooses, and I build for search and for three languages from the first release, not as an afterthought.
FAQ
How can a small UK business find public-sector tenders it can actually win?
Him Yip built a platform that reads the official UK tender feeds, matches each notice to a firm's trades, region and size, and suggests partners when a contract is too big to deliver alone.
Does the AI submit bids?
No. It drafts a first version from the firm's own information and lists the gaps. It never writes a price, and submission is always done by the firm.