A Guide to New Construction Tenders

Published 28/07/2021

by Georgie Morgan, Hudson Outsourcing Ltd

Are you wondering how to find new construction tenders? There are plenty of opportunities out there, but how do you find them? When you do find a suitable opportunity for your business, how do you win the bid? This guide will tell you how to find new construction contracts in the UK and offer tips for winning your next bid.

How to win new construction tenders

This guide will tell you how to find new construction tenders in the UK and offer tips for winning your next bid.

What type of construction tenders are there?

If you’re looking for new construction tenders, you might be wondering what type of contracts are out there.

Billions of pounds have been invested in the construction industry across the UK. This has increased the number of tendering opportunities out there. Especially as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, as more businesses are relying on tenders to grow their business.

Buyers may require a supplier for a number of reasons, including:

Supply of goods
Works
Utilities
Services

You can tender for contracts in various sub-sectors, including:

Refurbishment
Building Works
Small Construction Tenders
Civil Engineering
Electrical Tenders
Surveying
Demolition
Flooring
M&E
Cost Consultancy
Painting
Decorating
Masonry

The process of bidding for new construction tenders

To win construction tenders, you need to understand how to apply for them. The tendering process will seem complicated at first. However, it can be broken down into simple, easy to manage steps.

PAS-91

The first step in bidding for new construction tenders is completing the PAS-91.

In 2010, the UK construction industry launched the ‘standard selection questionnaire’. This is an industry-specific, standardised document that is supposed to streamline the tendering process. Basically, it’s a specialised PQQ. The document is widely known as the Publicly Available Specification, or PAS 91.

The PAS-91 removes the need for various questionnaires. Instead, you can focus your time and resources on a single document.

However, the idea behind the PAS-91 is the same as a PQQ. The buyer uses this to shortlist suppliers, so only those capable of delivering the contract progress to the next stage.

Invitation to tender

If you pass the PAS-91 stage, the next stage of bidding for new construction tenders is responding to the ITT.

The ITT, which stands for invitation to tender, is released by the buyer. Suppliers need to respond to the ITT, demonstrating why their company is the best to deliver the contract.

An ITT could include:

The form of a tender
Preliminaries (including pre-construction information and site waste management plan)
Contract or contract conditions
Employer’s information requirements
A tender pricing document
A drawing schedule
Design drawings
Specifications

Submit your tender response

The final stage of bidding for new construction tenders is to submit your tender response.

Your tender response should include details of the following:

Methods
Your pricing
How you’ll meet the requirements
Supporting documents, such as case studies, policies and procedures

Win a new construction tender with these helpful tips:

Your company should be the Most Economically Advantageous Tender (MEAT)

To win a new construction tender, your company needs to be the Most Economically Advantageous Tender. Basically, this means that your company will provide the best quality services for the lowest price. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the cheapest price will win. It’s all about finding the supplier who offers the best value for money.

Carefully read the buyer’s specifications

When you find a new construction tender for your business, it’s important that you carefully read through the buyer’s specifications. The buyer needs to see that your company is capable of delivering the contract. If you don’t read the specifications, you may miss key details that are important for the bid. You might miss crucial information from your tender response.

Give yourself enough time

New construction tenders will take up a lot of your time. So, to win your next bid, you need to give yourself enough time to produce your response.

This is particularly important for construction tenders. The buyer may ask you to provide a drawing schedule or even design drawings as part of your bid. The last thing you want is to submit an incomplete bid because you ran out of time. Giving yourself plenty of time ensures that you don’t rush through the tender.

Proofread your response

When faced with a long document, it can be easy to miss mistakes and errors. Especially if you produced the document yourself. That’s why it’s so important to proofread your response when bidding for new construction tenders.

A tender response full of spelling mistakes and grammatical errors won’t impress the buyer. In fact, you’ll probably lose marks. To make sure this doesn’t happen, you should ask someone else to proofread your response for you.

Ask for feedback

So far, we’ve offered you tips for winning a new construction tender. What should you do if you’re unsuccessful?

If you don’t win the bid, ask the buyer for feedback. Understanding where you went wrong could be the key to winning your next bid. You know how to improve for your next tendering opportunity.

Where can you find new construction tenders?

Are you looking for new construction tenders? Use Construction Tenders to find your next opportunity.

Construction Tenders is one centralised, easy-to-navigate portal hosting public and private construction leads and tendering opportunities.

You don’t need to rely on CPV Codes. Our Opportunity Trackers manually search and upload tenders from thousands of websites, making it easier for you to find them. You can find the best tender for you by filtering the results by budget, keyword and location.

Here are previous construction tenders sourced on our portal:

Supply of Constructional Timber (Marine Grade)

Waterways Ireland (CA) – Republic of Ireland – Budget: £100k

General Construction Multi Trade – Housing & Residential (20% VAT)

Homes for Haringey – London – Budget: £5million

Construction of 2 x 80m2 Mainstream Classrooms

St Patrick’s National School – Republic of Ireland – Budget: Undisclosed

Construction of a Cookery School Including All Ancillary Site Works & Services

Fourth Nature Ltd – Republic of Ireland – Budget: Undisclosed

Household Waste Recycling Centre & Waste Transfer Station Middlemore Lane, Aldridge Construction & Fryers Road, Bloxwich Redevelopment

Walsall Council e-Tendering – West Midlands – Budget: Undisclosed

A subscription to Construction Tenders will provide your business with:

Access to all unique, private and public sector opportunities within the construction industry.
An on-hand Account Manager to answer any questions you may have about competitive tendering in construction.
A daily email bulletin sent straight to your inbox when new construction tenders are uploaded that day.
Discounted support from Hudson Succeed, our bid writing division.
20-minutes free consultancy with one of our Bid Writers each month.

Get in touch today to book a free live demo.

Want to save even more time? Upgrade to Discover Elite

Upgrade to Discover Elite to optimise your tendering opportunities even when you’re busy. The Ultimate Time Saver and Become a Pre-Bid Master packages can improve your competitor awareness and bidding success rate. They can help save you even more time when searching for new construction tenders.

The Ultimate Time Saver package offers:

An annual subscription to a maximum of two Hudson Discover sector-specific portals. This option best suits a business that overlaps two industries such as Construction and Logistics.
A maximum of five tender breakdowns per month.
Weekly phone calls with your dedicated Account Manager to discuss viable tendering opportunities.
Pre-market and award engagement notices monitored on your behalf.
Buyer portal management including registration, password management, downloading documents and assessing viability based on your bid or no-bid

The Become a Pre-Bid Master package offers your business:

All of the above.
Up to seven tender breakdowns per month.
A Bid Strategy delivered by a Senior Bid Manager with a minimum of 5 years of experience. It will also be managed by our Global Bid Director.

Get the best content from Converge direct to your inbox every month.

Visit Construction Tenders

About The Author

Hudson is a global provider of tendering and business development solutions. The Hudson Group is split into eight strands, allowing us to help businesses at every level. No matter the size or industry, we help companies, both nationally and internationally, to reach their full potential. Our team has decades of experience, helping companies to find and win the contracts they want to deliver. Last year alone, we secured over £6 billion in direct contract wins for our clients.

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