Business owners wanting to grow their business, increase revenue, and extend market reach should give consideration to public sector contracts.
In recent years, the UK Government has outsourced around 29% of all its expenditure on public sector contracts.
That’s great news for SMEs.
With the right planning, your business could be among those to benefits.
What Are Public Sector Tenders?
Public sector tenders are opportunities for companies to bid for a contract to supply goods and/or services to a government or public sector client.
This is distinct from private sector tenders, which you can read more about here.
Public sector tendering can include sectors like:
- Construction
- Facilities management
- Engineering
- Health & social services
- Justice & home affairs
- Logistics
- Renewability & sustainability
- Transport
- And many more
With the right guidance, businesses that begin competing for public sector tenders can discover opportunities in their niche and adjacent ones, enabling them to expand their networks, reputation and income.
What Are the Benefits of Securing Public Sector Contracts?
While public sector tendering may initially seem daunting, given it’s more regulated and structured than private sector tendering, the ROI for preparing a winning bid is significant.
Benefits of securing public sector contracts include:
- Public sector tenders often result in longer-term contracts, resulting in more financial stability for an SME
- Under the Procurement Act 2023, the guidelines state that all public sector tenders must follow create a fair and transparent tendering process and contract delivery expectations
- All aspects of procurement are regulated in public sector tendering. This includes choosing realistic deadlines for bids so as not to limit SME participation and innovation in tenders
- 30-day payment window from invoice for all public sector contracts
- Elevated reputation through securing government or public sector contracts
How Does Public Sector Tendering Work?
Public sector tendering has three main stages: pre-tender, tender and post-tender processes.
Pre-Tender Stage
The government, or other public sector bodies, publish a notice of tender.
High value contracts (worth more than £139,688) have tender notices published in Find a Tender Service.
Meanwhile, contracts above £12,000 for public bodies, or £30,000 for local authorities, are published in Contracts Finder.
Businesses respond to the tender notice by registering their interest in tendering for the public sector contract.
This may be a prequalifying questionnaire (PQ) if the tender is likely to have more than one stage of tendering.
Bid writers that impress in the prequalifying round are then given an invitation to tender (ITT) to go further in the tendering process.
Not all tender processes have both steps; some public sector tendering, known as open tendering, goes straight from the notice of tender to invitation to tender.
It’s worth noting pre-qualifying may mean you’re eligible to bid on a range of public sector contracts during a defined period (e.g. four years) that are closed to other businesses that haven’t successfully prequalified.
Tendering Stage
This is where the business is required to provide information on their capability to successfully complete all requirements of the contract if their bid is successful.
This will include evidence of:
- The business’ financial standing
- Company policies
- Accreditations
- Insurance cover
- Health and safety provisions
- Technical and equipment resources
- Expertise of the company’s team
Depending on the type of public sector tender, different weight will be given to aspects of the bid.
It’s important your team understands how to shine in each aspect of the bid to present as strong contenders for public sector contracts.
At JGP Consultancy, we genuinely care about supporting your team with winning strategy and competitive edge.
The Procurement Act outlines other considerations that must be given weight in the tender, including, social value, environmental commitments and social responsibility.
It’s important to note that these aren’t just ‘nice-to-haves’.
Businesses need to show how they add social value, diversity, resilience and innovation to a community if they hope to be successful in tendering for public sector contracts.
Bid writing is an important opportunity to showcase your professionalism, your experience and your capability across all aspects of the public sector tender.
Achieving success requires nuanced skill that your team either needs to master inhouse or consider investing the bid writing services of procurement consultants.
Post-Tender Stage
Once a government or public sector body has evaluated all the tenders submitted to them against fair and transparent criteria, they’ll award the tender to the winning bid.
Contracts will be finalised, and your SME begins their fulfilment of the contract.
This is where all your preparation work pays off.
Finding the right tenders for your SME capabilities allows you to fulfil, and perhaps exceed, the expectations generated through your successful bid.
Your business can increase market reach, reputation and sustained financial growth.
Where Can You Find Public Sector Contract Opportunities?
It’s not difficult to find public sector contract opportunities.
In fact, thousands are available at any given time.
The real value is in knowing the right public sector contract opportunities for your business at the right time, so you can prepare a winning bid.
While you could scour through Find a Tender and Contracts Finder each day or sign up for alerts on sites that amass volumes of tenders, that takes valuable resources away from your core business.
At JGP Consultancy, we offer bespoke Tender Guide and Tender Finder services, both of which give a winning edge to our clients with public sector tendering.
One of the most important parts of tendering is knowing the tenders to bid for and the tenders not to bid for in your business journey.
Our expert consultants do the hard work for you of finding and compiling suitable tender and contract recommendations tailored to your SME, sent to your inbox each week for your consideration.
We also offer regular consultations with one of our growth team, helping your business to find and bid strategically for public sector contracts.
When to Seek Help for Your Public Sector Tenders?
If your team is looking for competitive advantage in tendering and sustainable business growth through public sector contracts, contact JGP Consultancy – the UK’s number one Tender Guide and Tender Finder consultants for SMEs.