Send One Scope And Get Comparable Bids Back

Write the scope once, let ClearFM put it in front of providers who actually cover the property, and compare bids that answer the same question. Awarding gets faster because the comparison is real.

15%

lower procurement costs were associated with public tenders that drew two or more bids instead of one, in a study by Finland’s competition authority.

Source: Finnish Competition and Consumer Authority, Are We Paying Too Much? The Cost of Low Competition in Public Procurement (2026)

Most requests for proposal go out as an email attachment to four vendors somebody already knows. Two respond. One prices a monthly service, the other prices per visit, and a third line item appears in one bid that nobody asked for. You end up building a spreadsheet to make the numbers sit next to each other, and the spreadsheet is where the decision actually gets made.

The scope is usually the problem. If the request says ‘janitorial, five days a week’ and nothing about square footage, restroom count, or who supplies consumables, every provider fills the gaps differently and every price means something different. Then the award goes to the lowest number, the scope gets clarified in month two, and the change order arrives in month three.

ClearFM turns a request for proposal into a structured scope, distributes it to providers covering the property's service area, and lines the responses up so you're comparing the same work at different prices.

Bids you can read in one pass, a decision you can explain to an owner, and a paper trail that shows why the winner won.

What you get

One scope, every bidder

A structured scope means every provider answers the same questions about the same building. Nobody gets to price a different job and call it a better deal, and you stop translating between documents before you can compare anything.

Distribution you don't do

ClearFM sends the request to providers in the property’s service area, so the bidder pool isn’t limited to the four numbers in your phone. Companies you’ve never heard of get to compete, and some of them are better.

You pick the winner

ClearFM distributes and structures the process, then gets out of the way. Your organization awards the work, on your criteria, with the bids in front of you. No algorithm decides which vendor cleans your buildings.

How it works

Write the scope

Build the request against a specific property, with the square footage, frequency, access hours and deliverables spelled out. The more the scope says, the less room a bidder has to price something else.

ClearFM distributes it

The request goes to providers whose service areas cover that property. You aren’t emailing attachments or calling to confirm receipt, and providers outside your existing list get a fair shot at the work.

Compare like for like

Responses come back against your scope, so pricing, inclusions and assumptions sit in the same structure. Read them side by side and ask one provider a question without re-opening the whole process.

Award and start work

Pick the winner and the award turns into work orders, invoices and payment inside the same platform. The scope you wrote is the scope the provider is held to, because it’s the same record.

Why teams run this on ClearFM

Bid comparison stops being a spreadsheet exercise

When six responses arrive in six formats, the comparison happens in a spreadsheet somebody builds by hand, and whoever builds it makes judgment calls nobody sees. A structured request removes that step. Pricing, inclusions and exclusions already line up, so the analysis takes minutes and the reasoning is visible to anyone who opens the record.

You get bids from vendors you'd never have called

Your bidder pool is normally whoever you already know, which caps both price competition and quality. ClearFM distributing to providers in the property’s service area widens that pool without adding work on your side. A regional company with better coverage in that county gets to bid, and sometimes wins.

Change orders shrink because the scope was clear

Most change orders trace back to something the request never said. Access hours, consumables, who moves the furniture. Writing the scope inside a structured request forces those answers up front, and the provider bids against them. The price you award is closer to the price you pay twelve months later.

Awards you can defend in a review

Someone will eventually ask why a vendor got a contract. With the scope, the bidder list, the responses and the award decision in one record, the answer takes thirty seconds. On Starter and above, history is unlimited, so a question about a 2024 award is still answerable in 2027.

Requesters can raise needs without a seat

Requester seats are unlimited on every plan. The site engineer who knows the chiller is failing can put that in front of a manager without waiting for procurement to buy another license. Requests start closer to the building, which usually means the scope has more of the real detail in it.

Running more requests costs nothing extra

There are no per-request charges. Free carries one open request, Starter five, and Growth and above are unlimited, so the number of requests you run is a capacity question rather than a budget one. Teams that re-bid recurring contracts on a real cycle tend to find money doing it.

Built for Real Estate & Facility Teams

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Questions people ask

How does ClearFM decide which providers get my request for proposal?

Service area. ClearFM distributes the request to providers whose stated coverage includes the property’s location, which is why the geographic data on your properties matters. You can also invite specific providers you found through Vendor Discovery or already work with. Your organization picks the winner, always.

How many open requests can I have at once?

One on Free, five on Starter, and unlimited on Growth and Enterprise. The limit counts open requests, not requests per year, so a closed and awarded request frees the slot. Most single-property teams manage fine on Starter, and portfolios running parallel bids across regions usually want Growth.

Is there a fee for each request for proposal?

No. There are no per-request charges and no setup fees. ClearFM charges a flat 3% on payments processed through the platform, and what you process is credited toward your plan fee. Running a request costs you the time it takes to write a good scope, which is time worth spending.

Can I re-bid a contract I've already awarded?

Yes, and you should. Copy the scope from the previous request, adjust what changed at the property, and send it out again. Unlimited history on Starter and above means last cycle’s bids and performance are still there to compare against, so you can see whether the incumbent’s pricing has drifted.