A tender notice is the buyer's advert: what it wants, roughly how much it's worth, when bids are due and what suppliers must meet. Read well, it tells you in ten minutes whether a tender is worth an evening. Here's an order that works, using the fields you'll see on Find a Tender and Contracts Finder.
1. Who is buying, and what
Start with the buyer and the title, then the description. Ask: is this the work I do, at the scale I do it? A council "needs assessment" might be a three-month research project; a "framework" of the same name might be a four-year list of suppliers with no guaranteed work. Look at the CPV codes too (the eight-digit categories): they show how the buyer classified the work, which is how alert services, Bidlark included, find it.
2. The value
The estimated value is usually the whole contract, including VAT under the Procurement Act's rules, and may cover several years or options to extend. Divide by the contract length to see the yearly figure. A notice with no value isn't necessarily small: check the description and the documents. Compare the value with your turnover: if a contract is worth several times your yearly income, expect questions about financial capacity, and think about whether you could deliver it alone.
3. The dates
- Tender deadline: the exact time your bid must be submitted on the buyer's portal. Late bids are almost always rejected. Bidlark always shows it in full, for example "Thursday 5 November at 12 noon".
- Clarification deadline: the last date to ask the buyer questions. Answers are usually shared with every bidder.
- Contract start and length: can you deliver in that window, with the people you have?
Most below-threshold notices give about four weeks. If there's less than a week left, be realistic about what you can write well.
4. The procedure and the threshold
Find a Tender notices say which legal regime applies and whether the contract is above or below the threshold. A below-threshold Procurement Act competition can't have a separate pre-qualification stage (section 85), so everyone who meets the basics can tender. Above the threshold, a competitive flexible procedure may use conditions of participation to make a shortlist first. See our below-threshold guide.
5. Who may bid
Look for reservations. A competition may be reserved for SMEs and VCSEs, for suppliers based in the UK, or for suppliers based in a named local area. Find a Tender records these as codes and in the Conditions of participation text. If it's reserved to an area you're not based in, stop here: you can't bid.
6. What you must hold
Read the conditions of participation and any selection criteria for hard requirements: insurance levels, a minimum turnover, certificates such as Cyber Essentials or ISO 9001, DBS checks, security clearance, policies. Sort them into three piles:
- Have it.
- Could get it in time: raising an insurance level, writing a policy, Cyber Essentials with a few weeks to go.
- Can't get it in time: SC clearance, an ISO certificate with a fortnight left, a turnover far above yours. One of these usually means "not this one".
Remember that a buyer can't require contract insurance to be in place before award; it can require you to have it when the contract starts.
7. How it will be scored
The documents set out the award criteria and weightings: quality, price, social value. A heavy quality weighting with specific questions favours a specialist who writes clearly. Note any word limits and the questions with the most marks.
8. How to respond
The notice tells you where the documents are and how to submit, usually a buyer's eSourcing portal you register on. Download the full pack early; the notice is only the summary, and the documents decide.
Deciding in ten minutes
If it's your work, at a value you can deliver, with time to write, open to you, and asking for nothing you can't get in time, it's worth a bid. If one or two things need fixing, it's a stretch: decide whether the fix is worth it. Bidlark's verdicts follow the same order, so the morning email does the first ten minutes for you, and the card's checklist shows the notice's own words for every requirement.