Do you know where to find tender and contract opportunities? If tendering for public sector contracts is something that you would like to pursue, but are unsure of where to start… Read on to find out more!
There are a number of ways in which you are able to find tenders that are suitable for your business to bid for. There are subscription services such as Tenders Direct and BiP’s Tracker, in addition to free to access tender and contracts databases such as Contracts Finder , the new Government Find-A-Tender Service (available from 23:00 on 31st December 2020), and also TED (Tenders European Daily) for opportunities in the EU.
Most tender sites and procurement portals can email alerts to you regarding forthcoming opportunities. In order to set up these email alerts you will need to register and create saved searches using keywords and codes.
Once you have located a tender opportunity that you wish to pursue, you will need to register with the relevant procurement portal to express an interest and access the documentation. When registering with such portals, you are usually asked to select category codes that match the products/services that your business supplies. These category codes are then used to alert you of any future opportunities listed on the site that match your area of business. Assuming you are correctly registered, alerts of new tenders and opportunities are emailed to you automatically from the portal(s).
If the product or service that you supply is relevant to a particular region, county or geographic area, you can use portal registrations as a way of being automatically alerted to contracts in those specific areas. Many portals now have the functionality for you to specify a search area or region. However, be aware that sometimes opportunities are recorded against the location of the buyers office. This may not always relate to the location where the products/services are required. Please also be sure that your registrations allow for tenders for national frameworks and Dynamic Purchasing Systems (DPS) that may have regional lots (more about frameworks and DPSs here).
You can also consider identifying your potential public sector customers by authority type, for example, Emergency Services, Councils or NHS and registering with their e-tendering sites. For example many emergency services use the Bluelight portal.
Identifying e-tendering portals by region covered or authority type in this way can enable you to receive tender alerts without having to pay a subscription fee to one of the independent tender subscription services.
At Tender Victory, our tender consultants work with a range of clients in monitoring and pre-assessing their tender alerts. Some of our clients deliver services which are geographically restricted, others are able to work nationwide. When we set up their tender alerts, for those that are restricted by location, we identify all of the authorities within their reach area that they would like to do business with. For the clients to whom we provide this monitoring and pre-assessment service, our monitoring of their tender alerts from e-tendering portals means that we need only make contact regarding tender opportunities that are right for them to pursue. Accordingly they do not need to be distracted by the many daily emails of opportunities that are just not relevant to them. An example of where this works well is for our clients who need to be registered in waste categories for a specific waste stream, but do not provide general or municipal waste services, for which there are lots of alerts!
This monitoring and pre-assessment is our Tender Alerts Administration Service. Please contact us for more information, or follow this link to read more and download our summary of service.
If you would like to set up your own registrations for tender alerts, you will find our eSourcing Directory an excellent resource as it lists all free-to-register buyer procurement portals that we are aware of. The directory is also updated quarterly.
In summary:
Q: How to find tenders and contracts?
A: To find tenders and contracts without subscription fees, decide which authorities you would like to work with and register on their e-procurement portals – a list of which, organised by region, can be found here.
Q: Where to find tenders and contracts?
A: To find tenders and contracts without subscription fees, register with Contracts Finder and Find-A-Tender (or TED for the EU) in addition to registering with buyer specific portals as described above. If you are happy to pay a subscription fee, register with Tenders Direct or BiP’s Tracker and they will email alerts directly to you.