How to find upcoming Tenders…
One of the most important factors when considering potential tender opportunities applicable to your business or sector, is to develop a good supply of Contract Notices using freely available information about upcoming tenders from a range of commissioners.
There are numerous online portals where contract notices, prior information notices and bidder event details are published. Many of these provide regular email update functions as well as comprehensive search facilities. Universal portals, covering all industry areas, include the European-wide Tenders Electronic Daily and the UK-wide Contracts Finder.
There are also regional portals to which a cluster of Local Authorities submit Contract Notices, including:-
- London Tenders https://www.londontenders.org/
- Supplying the South West https://www.supplyingthesouthwest.org.uk/
- CHEST, (covering the North West) https://www.the-chest.org.uk/
- NEPO (covering the North East) https://www.nepo.org/
Other portals cover the other regions and these can be found by searching for ‘local authority tender portals’ or by entering your area followed by ‘contract notices’.
Alternatively, visit the business/tenders section of your Local Authority to find out which portal they release Contract Notices through. There are also a number of industry-specific contract portals, such as Supply2Health, Constructionline and BlueLight.
Again, these are free to access and have search and email update facilities. By combining these portals, your industry specialist portal and a regional portal for example, you can ensure you have a stream of contract opportunities dropping into your inbox on a regular basis.
Tips on finding Tender Opportunities in the forthcoming year
Find information on likely up-coming tenders in 6-12 months’ time, thereby giving yourself more time to prepare. Get ahead of the curve. As well as being a valuable resource for finding contract notices, Tenders Electronic Daily (TED) is also a powerful research tool. TED maintains an Archive of Contract Award Notices, which all public sector commissioners are required to publish once the tender process is complete.
The Contract Award Notice provides details of the awarding organisation, the company awarded the contract, the contract value and the date of award. This database can be useful for monitoring contracting activity in your geographic area or your business sector or in a number of other ways. Perhaps one of the best ways of using this information, however, is to identify relevant contracts that will be coming up for renewal over the next few months, say 6 – 12 months ahead. This gives you more time the get prepared, consider a partnership proposal and possibly establish a level of communication with the commissioning organisation.
To access this information, you need to search the TED Archives for Contract Award Notices. You can do this once you’re logged into TED by going to the search screen, selecting ‘Archives’ from the drop down menu at the top and selecting ‘Contract Award Notices’ from the ‘Document Type’ field within the search criteria. You can narrow your search by geographic area and contract focus/subject using the NUTS codes and CPV codes respectively. Once you’ve defined your search criteria, enter a date around two and half years ago.
As contract terms tend to be 3 years in duration, this will provide a list of contracts that are likely to come up for renewal in around 6-12 months’ time.
Other useful resources available on our site:
Tender Writing | Tender Evaluation | Case Studies
If you need help with tender writing for an important business opportunity, or perhaps you have written a tender and would like an expert to evaluate it, we can help.
Our Tender Writing Case Studies page offers a flavour of how we get our successful results across a broad range of sectors.
If you prefer to speak to somebody on the phone, our friendly and experienced team are ready to speak with you on 0115 784 3306.
