If you’re used to finding work through a combination of referrals and in-bound marketing from the private sector, you might be wondering how you actually go about finding any public sector tenders to respond to.
The reality is, virtually ALL public sector tenders are required to be published online, available for any supplier to find, read and respond to. There are a few exceptions and quirks around this:
We’ll go through each of those points in more detail shortly, but first let’s talk about WHERE these opportunities are published.
There are four main listing websites, one for each of England, Scotland, N.Ireland and Wales:
England – https://www.gov.uk/contracts-finder and https://www.gov.uk/find-tender
Scotland – https://www.publiccontractsscotland.gov.uk/
N.Ireland – https://etendersni.gov.uk/epps/home.do
Wales – https://www.sell2wales.gov.wales/
This isn’t ALL of the tender listings websites, however – just the ones from government departments that are obliged to publish their opportunities according to the rules. There are also many other websites which will capture non-obligatory procurement exercises and other activities such as private projects which are obliged to publish their opportunities as a condition of receiving public funding.
You might already be realising that keeping track of all of the potential opportunities can be quite time-consuming. There’s a few approaches you can take to make your life simpler.
Since we’ve mentioned a procurement portal again, it’s probably worth explaining what they are, too. Put simply, they are a portal where an organisation will host their tender opportunity, with the ability for them to upload documents, written details of the tender, and send and respond to questions from suppliers.
There are a few ‘big’ names in procurement portal supply, and you’ll quickly come to recognise a portal’s interface, even if you find yourself registering again for a different organisation, as it’s fairly common for larger orgs in particular to maintain their own portal.
Typically, you’ll be able to access the basic details of a tender without registering, but to gain access to the documents, and to express an interest in responding, you’ll need to register and login. Once you’ve done that, you can download all the documents, ask questions (as well as review any questions that have already been asked, if shared), and ultimately either upload your response, or decline the opportunity if you decide it’s not for you.
Most, but not all, tenders will be hosted on a procurement platform. Sometimes, simpler jobs will just be listed on Contracts Finder with a direct contact to the client, or a link to a downloadable document on a website, and your response will be emailed to the client directly.
There are plenty to choose from, and I’ll list a few of them to the right (or below, on mobile). Each pretty much do the same thing – provide you access to a huge array of opportunities, re-published on their website almost as quickly as they are published on the official ones, in a single place. Some offer better search tools, some are cheaper (or even free at point of use). Many offer complimentary services such as tender writing training and support services.
My advice here is to try a few of them out – most offer free trials of some kind – to find which one works for you. Personally, I use https://www.b2bquotetenders.co.uk, and have been doing so for over 10 years now. Are they the best? That’s for you to decide, to be honest.
The reason I continue to use them is that my early experiences with some other aggregators were either poor in terms of their results, or felt very spammy – signing up resulted in a LOT of upsell communications for their services, and I decided I’d rather pay B2B more for what is a generally very quiet service from them.
What I do know is they offer a 2 week free trial, so there’s no real harm in trying them out. If you find one you love more, please do let me know why!
Yep. Accessing public tenders is actually very simple, because it’s designed to be by law. Not that it’s necessarily a good thing, because the first thing you’ll notice once you have a list of all the open tenders in front of you is just how many you think you’d be able to supply….how can you possibly respond to them all? Keep reading through the steps to figure it out!
of course, of course.
This amount is fixed at £10,000+VAT, but it does change periodically. Anything under this amount is left to the organisation themselves to decide. It’s worth noting that many organisations will still have set a lower limit for themselves and will still choose to publicly list projects under the official amount. I have seen a tender for 10 HMDI cables before now, thankfully that level of silliness seems to have stopped.
It’s also worth knowing that many organisations will have a ‘three quote rule’ for every job over a much more nominal amount, say £1,000, where every requirement over that budget has to be subjected to at least three competitive quotes from suppliers…however those opportunities do not need to be published, and the suppliers are often selected directly by the client. Combined with setting their own limits, this is a typical example of how organisations can be stricter with their own procurement.
There are two main ‘types’ – low and high. Low is simply any project over the minimum threshold and under the maximum threshold of £135,000 (which like the minimum, can change periodically). High is simply anything over that, and will include projects all the way up to national supply with budgets in the hundreds of millions.
A framework is typically made up of two things – a budget, and a list of suppliers. Getting onto the framework is usually presented like a normal tender, in that it will be publicly listed and you’ll submit a response to it.
If successful, you’ll then be able to bid for work specifically related to that framework, as a pre-approved supplier. Suppliers who are NOT on the framework will not be able to bid, so it can be great to get on a local council framework, for example.
The projects within a framework are typically smaller, because frameworks are designed to allow an organisation to allocate it’s total budget for say digital marketing and design, knowing that it will actually be made up of lots of small jobs over the next few years, which they can offer out and award more quickly to their framework suppliers than they could a full public procurement process.
One exception to this structure are the large, usually government-run supplier frameworks, such as the Digital Marketplace and the various frameworks that exist within it. The underlying concept is the same, however the projects are larger, and there could be thousands of suppliers.
What’s common across all frameworks is that, if you’re not on it, you cannot apply for the job. And you cannot apply to get on the framework retrospectively, either – they all have an application period, and if you miss it, or are not successful, then those opportunities are not available to you.
