How to find work before it is advertised

By the time a tender notice appears, the buyer has already written the specification, often after talking to whoever currently does the work. Three weeks later they choose. If the first you hear of it is the notice, you are bidding against someone who helped shape the question.

Almost everything you need to fix that is already public.

1. Contract end dates

When a public body awards a contract, the notice frequently includes when it ends. A contract ending in fourteen months is a procurement being thought about now, and the incumbent’s name and price are on the same record.

That is what the “ending soon” pages on this site are: every contract in a category running out in the next eighteen months, with who holds it and what it was worth.

The gap, stated plainly. Counted across every award held here, Contracts Finder publishes an end date on all of them and Find a Tender on about one in a hundred. Find a Tender carries the higher-value work. So these pages are close to complete for smaller and mid-sized contracts and sparse for the largest ones. A big contract missing from a list is far more likely to be an unpublished date than a contract that does not exist.

2. Pipeline notices

Larger buyers publish what they expect to put out over the next 18 months. It is the longest warning available anywhere, it is free, and almost nobody reads it. If a buyer matters to you, their pipeline notice is the single most useful document they produce.

3. Preliminary market engagement

A buyer publishes one of these when they want to talk to suppliers before writing the specification. Turning up is how a specification ends up describing something you can deliver instead of something only the incumbent can. This is the stage where bids are actually won.

4. Contract change notices

Published before a live contract’s value or length changes. An extension means the work you were waiting for has just moved. Better to know now than to hold a month of capacity for it.

What to do with a contract that ends in a year

1. Read the original award. Value, length, who won. On this site the notice links back to the buyer’s own record, so you can read what they actually asked for.
2. Look at the incumbent. Their page here shows what else they hold. A firm with fifty public contracts will defend this one; a firm with two may be about to lose interest.
3. Contact the buyer about nine to twelve months out. Not to sell, but to ask how they are thinking about the next one and whether they plan any market engagement. That call is normal, expected, and almost nobody makes it.
4. Fix whatever would disqualify you, now. Certifications, accounts, policies, a PPON. All of it takes weeks and none of it can be done in the three weeks you will have.

A caution about end dates

A published end date is the date in the contract as awarded. Contracts get extended, and an extension is often published as a contract change notice rather than as a new date on the original. Treat the date as the earliest plausible moment the work comes back, not a promise.

Pick your category and the contracts running out in it are one click from there.