How public work is bought
The rules changed recently and the vocabulary is nobody’s first language. These cover the parts that decide whether a bid is worth a fortnight of your time.
Start wherever your bid is. Every figure in them comes from the government’s own pages, listed and dated at the foot of each one, so you can check anything that decides something.
Work out what you are looking at
Three pieces of vocabulary decide whether a notice is worth opening: which rules it falls under, which kind of notice it is, and what the code on it actually covers.
- Above or below threshold: which rules apply to your contractWork out, in about a minute, which set of rules a contract falls under and what that means for how you will have to bid.3 min read
- The notice types, and which ones you actually need to watchKnow which notice means “you can bid now”, which means “you have already missed it”, and which is the one worth setting an alert on.3 min read
- How to read a CPV code, and why searching by one misses workRead any classification code in about ten seconds, and understand why it should never be the only thing you search on.3 min read
Be ready before the deadline is set
A registration you do once, the route with no closing date to miss, and how to know about work a year before it is advertised.
- How to get a PPON, and why a bid gets rejected without oneHalf an hour, done once, that stops an otherwise good bid being thrown out on a technicality.2 min read
- Dynamic markets and DPS: the list you can join at any timeUnderstand the one route into public work that does not have a closing date you can miss.2 min read
- How to find work before it is advertisedStop competing on a three-week deadline against someone who has known about it for a year.3 min read
What the scoring actually rewards
The part of the score nobody reads the rules for, the badge that means less than it sounds, and the certificate that can stop your bid at the door.
- Social value: what councils actually owe you, and what they do notStop guessing how much of the score social value is worth, and start reading it off the tender documents where it is always written down.3 min read
- “Suitable for SMEs”: what that label is actually worthLearn to tell the contracts a small firm can genuinely win from the ones that merely say so.2 min read
- Cyber Essentials: when you need it to bid, and when you do notFind out whether the certificate is a blocker for the bid in front of you, before you spend anything on it.2 min read