Every week, design and digital agencies across the UK spot tenders on Contracts Finder, Find a Tender, and procurement portals that look like they might be worth pursuing. The question they immediately face isn't "how do we win this?" — it's "should we even try?"
Bidding on a public sector tender you can't win is expensive. A competitive tender response can take 20–80 hours of senior time. If you're bidding on three or four that aren't right for you, that's a week of BD effort wasted every month.
The answer is a consistent qualification process: a structured go/no-go decision you make before you write a single word.
This guide gives you that checklist.
Why Qualification Matters More Than You Think
Most agencies don't have a formal qualification process. They spot a tender that looks interesting, check whether they meet the word "design" somewhere in the brief, and decide on gut feel whether to bid. That's how you end up writing responses for tenders where:
- The buyer already has a preferred supplier and is tendering to comply with procurement rules
- Your day rate is 40% above the published budget
- The deadline is three days away and the specification runs to 80 pages
- The contract is in a sector where you have no relevant case studies
A go/no-go checklist doesn't eliminate risk. It forces you to look at the evidence before you commit.
The Checklist: Eight Questions Before You Bid
1. Do we meet the minimum eligibility requirements?
Before anything else, check the hard gates:
- Turnover threshold: Many frameworks require annual turnover of 2× the contract value. If the contract is worth £300k and your turnover is £400k, you may be ineligible regardless of how good your work is.
- Insurance levels: Professional indemnity and public liability insurance requirements are often specified. Check the amounts against your current cover.
- Security clearance: Some central government and defence contracts require SC or DV-cleared staff. If you don't have them, don't bid.
- Framework membership: If the opportunity is restricted to a specific framework (DOS7, G-Cloud, CCS TS3), you need to be on it. If you're not, this is a no.
- SME status: Some lots are reserved for SMEs. If you're under the threshold (under 250 employees, under €50m turnover), you're automatically eligible — but check whether the lot you're applying for has different criteria.
Verdict: If you fail any hard eligibility gate, stop here. The tender is not for you.
Every week, design and digital agencies across the UK spot tenders on Contracts Finder, Find a Tender, and procurement portals that look like they might be worth pursuing. The question they immediately face isn't "how do we win this?" — it's "should we even try?"
Bidding on a public sector tender you can't win is expensive. A competitive tender response can take 20–80 hours of senior time. If you're bidding on three or four that aren't right for you, that's a week of BD effort wasted every month.
The answer is a consistent qualification process: a structured go/no-go decision you make before you write a single word.
This guide gives you that checklist.
Why Qualification Matters More Than You Think
Most agencies don't have a formal qualification process. They spot a tender that looks interesting, check whether they meet the word "design" somewhere in the brief, and decide on gut feel whether to bid. That's how you end up writing responses for tenders where:
- The buyer already has a preferred supplier and is tendering to comply with procurement rules
- Your day rate is 40% above the published budget
- The deadline is three days away and the specification runs to 80 pages
- The contract is in a sector where you have no relevant case studies
A go/no-go checklist doesn't eliminate risk. It forces you to look at the evidence before you commit.
The Checklist: Eight Questions Before You Bid
1. Do we meet the minimum eligibility requirements?
Before anything else, check the hard gates:
- Turnover threshold: Many frameworks require annual turnover of 2× the contract value. If the contract is worth £300k and your turnover is £400k, you may be ineligible regardless of how good your work is.
- Insurance levels: Professional indemnity and public liability insurance requirements are often specified. Check the amounts against your current cover.
- Security clearance: Some central government and defence contracts require SC or DV-cleared staff. If you don't have them, don't bid.
- Framework membership: If the opportunity is restricted to a specific framework (DOS7, G-Cloud, CCS TS3), you need to be on it. If you're not, this is a no.
- SME status: Some lots are reserved for SMEs. If you're under the threshold (under 250 employees, under €50m turnover), you're automatically eligible — but check whether the lot you're applying for has different criteria.
Verdict: If you fail any hard eligibility gate, stop here. The tender is not for you.
2. Can we evidence what they're asking for?
Public sector buyers don't take your word for it. They ask for evidence: case studies, references, team CVs, client testimonials.
Before you bid, check:
- Relevant sector experience: Do you have at least one case study from a public sector organisation in a similar area (local government, NHS, education, central government)? Adjacent evidence (e.g. a charity project for a health-related charity) can work, but sector match is stronger.
- Relevant contract scale: If the contract is worth £150k and your largest public sector project was £30k, that gap will be visible. You don't need an exact match, but being an order of magnitude smaller raises flags.
- Technical capability: If they're asking for GDS-compliant design, accessibility to WCAG 2.1 AA, or specific tech stacks, can you demonstrate you've done it — not just that you can?
- Named team members: Some bids ask for CVs of the people who will actually deliver the work. Do you have those people available, and do their CVs support the bid?
Verdict: If you can't credibly evidence two or three of the above, this is a high-risk bid. Not necessarily a no, but factor that into your decision.
3. What is the realistic competition?
You're not bidding in a vacuum. Think about who else is likely on the shortlist:
- Framework competition: On DOS7, G-Cloud, and CCS frameworks, buyers shortlist from a pre-qualified pool. If you're one of 200 suppliers on a lot, your competition is narrower than it looks — but only if you understand what the buyer is optimising for.
- Incumbent advantage: Check whether the buyer has recently run a similar contract. If so, who won it? Incumbents have a significant advantage: they know the buyer, the stakeholders, and the internal politics. Displacing an incumbent is possible, but you should know you're trying.
- Scale mismatch: If the opportunity is with a large central government department and the typical winner is a 200-person consultancy, a 25-person design agency is fighting a positioning battle as much as a quality one. That can be won — but only if you address it directly.
Verdict: There's no automatic score here. But if you're the clear underdog on all dimensions, ask whether the 60 hours of bid writing is better spent elsewhere.
4. Is the budget realistic for the work?
Public sector tenders often include a published budget or contract value. When they don't, it's usually in the Prior Information Notice or the ITT documentation.
Check:
- Day rate vs. budget: Divide the total contract value by the estimated number of days. Does that imply a day rate that works for your agency? If the budget implies £300/day and your blended rate is £800/day, either the scope is wrong or you're going to lose on price.
- Scope vs. price: Read the specification carefully. Some public sector briefs describe scope that would require 500 days of work at a budget that implies 80. That's not your problem to solve — it's a sign the buyer hasn't costed the work properly.
- Payment terms: Many public sector bodies pay in 30 days, some in 60 or 90. Factor in your cash flow. A £200k contract paid quarterly in arrears is a different proposition from one paid monthly.
Verdict: If the budget is incompatible with your rates or the scope is undeliverable at the price, this is a no.
5. What is the relationship status with this buyer?
Cold bid or warm relationship? It matters.
- Known buyer: Have you worked with this organisation before, or do you have an existing relationship with anyone on the decision-making side? If so, you have context that other bidders don't.
- Cold bid: If you've never interacted with this buyer, that's not disqualifying — but it means your written response has to work harder. You have no relationship equity to fall back on.
- Pre-market engagement: Some procurements include a market engagement phase (supplier days, Q&A sessions, prior information notices). If you participated, you have context. If you didn't know it was happening, that's a signal about your tender monitoring process.
Verdict: A cold bid against an incumbent or against better-connected competitors is a harder ask. Price that difficulty into your decision.
6. What is the timeline, and can we actually deliver it?
Realistic timeline assessment has two parts:
Bid timeline:
- When is the submission deadline?
- How many working days is that from today?
- What else is due in that window (other proposals, existing client deadlines)?
- Does the specification require a clarification period? If so, have you used it?
A minimum viable tender response for a £100k+ public sector contract typically requires 20–40 hours of focused work. If you have five working days and three people with three hours each available, that's 45 hours — viable if nothing else gets in the way. If you have three working days with the same resource, that's probably not a strong bid.
Delivery timeline:
- When does the contract start?
- Are you staffed to deliver in that window?
- Do you have any conflicts (key team members on leave, existing contracts running in parallel)?
Verdict: If the timeline is undeliverable for either the bid or the work itself, this is a no.
7. What is the strategic value of this contract?
Not all bids are equal. Some contracts are worth pursuing even if the odds are uncertain because of what winning would unlock.
Consider:
- Reference client value: Is this a buyer whose name would open doors elsewhere? (NHS England, DLUHC, a major local authority.) Sometimes the PR value of a win is worth accepting a more competitive process.
- Framework foothold: Winning a contract with a buyer who uses a specific framework (e.g. DOS7) can position you as an experienced supplier for future lots with other buyers on the same framework.
- Sector entry: If you're trying to break into a new sector (e.g. NHS, when your track record is in local government), a competitive bid can be worth the effort even without a guarantee.
- Team development: Bid writing is a skill. If your team is new to public sector work, a lower-stakes tender can be good practice — even if you don't win.
Verdict: Strategic value can tip a borderline decision towards a yes. It rarely justifies bidding for a contract you fundamentally can't win.
8. What does your gut say — and why?
After you've worked through the above, ask yourself: if we win this, would we be glad?
Some tenders pass all the objective tests but feel wrong: the buyer seems disorganised, the scope is unclear, the brief has been reissued twice, there's political complexity in the background. Some pass only some tests but feel right: it's a buyer you know, the work is in your sweet spot, the budget is fair.
Your gut is informed by pattern recognition. It's worth listening to.
The question to ask: If we win this contract at the stated value, with the stated scope, delivered to the stated timeline — will it be a good engagement? If the honest answer is "probably not", that's your answer.
Scoring Your Decision
Run through all eight questions and tally your assessment:
| Question | Pass | Marginal | Fail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Eligibility | |||
| Evidence | |||
| Competition | |||
| Budget | |||
| Relationship | |||
| Timeline | |||
| Strategic value | |||
| Gut check |
Interpret your results:
- 5+ Pass, 0 Fail: Bid. Prioritise this.
- 3–4 Pass, 1 Fail: Consider carefully. What would it take to close the gaps?
- Any hard fail (Eligibility or Timeline): Don't bid.
- 3+ Marginal or Fail: This is a low-confidence bid. Only proceed if the strategic value is exceptional.
The Real Problem Isn't Qualification — It's Finding Enough Tenders to Qualify
The go/no-go checklist works when you have a pipeline of opportunities to filter. But most agencies don't.
The typical agency discovers tenders late — by chance, through Google searches, via a client mentioning something in passing. By the time they find an opportunity and run it through this checklist, there are often five working days left to submit.
The agencies that consistently win public sector work don't discover tenders — they monitor for them, systematically, across every relevant portal and framework.
That's the problem Tandara was built to solve.
Tandara monitors UK procurement portals daily and filters results by relevance to design and digital agencies — so you see the tenders that are right for you, at the point when you still have time to qualify them properly and write a strong response.
If your agency does public sector work, or wants to, a 14-day free trial takes about five minutes to set up: https://www.tandara.co.uk
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