3. How to increase your chances of winning Public Sector Contracts
Outlined below are some important tips to consider when competing for public sector contracts:
- Investigate your sector and only bid for work that you are sure you can do.
- Make sure you know, early on in the procedure, what format you will have to use to fill in the buyer's documents. You also need to know what timescales you are working to and whether interviews will be likely.
- Plan and cost the full extent of delivering the contract to ensure that you have taken full account of overheads and resource implications.
- Always provide the information you are asked for and make sure you accurately answer all the questions. If you cannot do so, check whether your bid will be acceptable before you send it back. If you are not sure of anything, ask the buyer in good time.
- Plan your bid around the timetable the buyer gives you to make sure you can meet all deadlines.
- If your bid is unclear and the buyer asks you to explain something, you must give your explanation by the original deadline, unless they tell you otherwise.
- Remember that at the Invitation to Tender stage you are being evaluated on how well you would be able to deliver the goods or services required, in line with the criteria given. You will want your response to be better than that proposed by your competitors.
- Remember, your bid will be evaluated only on the information you provide as part of the tender process.
- Be patient, as the procedure from the first advert to awarding the contract can take months.
- Delivering the contract is one of the best ways of ensuring that you keep the contract as it helps build your reputation for contract delivery.
Feedback - It is important that suppliers seek and receive constructive feedback to help improve performance in future bidding exercises.
Some feedback on your tender may be given when you are notified of whether your bid has been successful. Feedback must be given on request for all contracts with a value over the EC thresholds within 15 days. For contracts under those values, debriefing is encouraged as good practice. Feedback is obligatory under the Suppliers' Charter 2.
A Single Point of Enquiry5 has been established as an impartial point of contact for businesses where they can ask for advice or raise concerns about public procurement practices in Scotland. It aims to:
- provide businesses with advice on procurement legislation and practices.
- seek resolution of disputes regarding procurement practice.
- help improve the consistency of public procurement processes applied by public and publicly funded bodies in Scotland.