Once the tender notice is published, there is a time limit for suppliers to express interest or submit a tender, depending on the procedure being followed.
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Strictly speaking, a “tender” is the actual bid that is submitted by a business to win work, but in the public sector procurement context, it is used more loosely to cover the whole public procurement tender process — from the publication of the public sector contract notice to the bidding on the contract itself.
The public procurement tendering process starts with a contract notice, which is published by a public sector organisation to generate competing offers to meet the specific requirements outlined in the contract notice.
Generally, the tender process stages are:
There are several public tender procedures a public sector body can use, and this decision will be based on the specifics of the project. The most common tendering procedures are:
The four procurement procedures most frequently used by public sector bodies are Open Procedure, Restricted Procedure, Competitive Dialogue, and Negotiated Procurement.
When applying for public sector tenders, a contract notice will inform you which of the four public sector procurement procedures should be used, as well as other necessary details, such as the selection criteria that will apply during the selection stage and the application deadline.
The next steps in the public sector tender process are slightly more complicated because these invitation to tender documents take different structured forms depending on the procedure.
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If you bid for public sector or government contracts and are considered a suitable supplier, depending on the tender procedure, you will either be awarded the contract or be shortlisted by the contracting authority and receive an Invitation to Tender (ITT).
If your tender application is unsuccessful, you can request feedback from the awarding body to help you improve your likelihood of winning future bids on public sector contracts.
Any supplier can enter the UK government supply chain by winning public sector tenders. Contract portals like those offered by Tracker help simplify the tender bidding process by making tenders easier to find, allowing you to find and bid on more public sector tenders.
When answering the question of ‘What are public tenders?’, it is helpful to also understand other formats that fall under the umbrella of public sector tenders in the UK. A framework agreement is similar to a tender in that a public sector organisation will use it to find suppliers when they are in need of certain goods, services, or works.
While there can only be one awardee when suppliers tender for traditional public sector contracts, multiple suppliers can win public sector framework agreements. While this doesn’t guarantee work for all of these suppliers, it does allow the contracting authority to call on any of them to take on the work for the duration of the framework agreement without needing to repeat the invitation to tender process. These are called call offs or call off contracts.
A dynamic purchasing system (DPS) is another type of tender procedure you may encounter. The major difference between a DPS and framework agreement is that a procurement framework will close once all of the suppliers have been chosen and new suppliers can only bid to join when it reopens. A DPS allows suppliers to join at any point.
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