Many believe the hard part is writing the bid. It often isn’t. The hard part is building a search process that brings the right tenders to you early, consistently, and without burying you in junk. That matters because the market is huge. In 2023, the UK public sector released
A Prior Information Notice lands in your inbox. It looks important. It mentions a public body, a future contract, maybe a rough scope, and not much else. You’re left asking the same questions most bid teams ask the first time they see one. Is this a live tender, or
Most advice on tendering gets one big thing wrong. It tells you to prove you're the best supplier. That isn't how contracts are awarded. Contracts are awarded to the bidder that scores highest against the published criteria. That sounds obvious, but teams still lose marks by
You’re probably doing one of two things right now. Either you’ve looked at public sector work before and backed away because the paperwork looked endless. Or you’re bidding already, but every tender turns into a scramble of missing policies, rushed answers and late nights. That’s normal.
Finding government contracts is worth taking seriously because the market is far bigger than often perceived. The UK public sector procurement market is worth over £300 billion a year, with central government alone accounting for £118 billion in direct spend in 2022/23, and over 40,000 contracts advertised across
Friday afternoon. A new ITT lands in your inbox. It’s long, dense, and due soon enough to ruin your week if you handle it the old way. That’s still normal for a lot of bid teams. Too much time goes into hunting for the right tender, pulling old
You’re reviewing a live opportunity. The buyer is familiar. The incumbent is familiar too. Then you see Serco as a supplier again. That’s usually the point where smaller teams either overreact or ignore the signal completely. Both are mistakes. Serco share prices won’t tell you who’ll
A good tender lands in your inbox on a Tuesday morning. The fit is obvious. The buyer is credible. The scope is right. The deadline, of course, is awful. That’s how most bid scrambles start. Someone downloads the pack from Contracts Finder, someone else skims the pricing schedule, and
You know the pattern. A framework agreement looked likely to land this month. A council buyer was answering clarifications. The portal was busy. Then an election gets called and everything goes quiet. No award notice. No new tender. No reply from the procurement contact you spoke to last week. Someone
You’ve probably been there. A tender lands. It looks winnable, commercially important, and time-sensitive. Then reality kicks in. Your subject matter experts are busy, your bid team is stretched, and someone suggests bringing in outside help. That usually leads to three options. Hire a consultant, find a freelancer, or
A tender lands on your desk on Tuesday. Clarification questions close on Thursday. Your ops lead knows the delivery model, your finance person can price it, and nobody has time to turn that into a scored response that reads like a winning bid. That’s usually the moment people start
You’re probably seeing “AI” on every bid tool demo now. One vendor says machine learning. Another says deep learning. A third says both, then moves straight to the pricing slide. For an SME bidding on public sector work, the difference matters. It affects what the tool can do, how