Mandy Millar 09/07/2026 Mandy Millar 09/07/2026

Getting your compliance in order

Let's be honest. This is the least exciting part of bid readiness. No one gets fired up about insurance certificates and policy documents. But get this wrong and none of the exciting stuff matters, because you won't make it past the first check.

Before a buyer looks at a single word of your quality responses, they check whether you're eligible to bid at all. Compliance is the entry requirement, not the winning formula. But without it, nothing else matters.

Exclusion grounds

Every tender will ask you to declare whether any exclusion grounds apply to your business. These fall into two categories.

Mandatory exclusion grounds are absolute. If they apply, you cannot bid. These cover things like serious criminal convictions, terrorism offences, fraud, and corruption. If any of these apply to your business, a director, or someone with significant control, you will be excluded.

Discretionary exclusion grounds are different. These are things a buyer can choose to exclude you for, but doesn't have to. They include things like insolvency, significant past performance failures, misrepresentation, and certain financial irregularities. If any of these apply, you need to declare them, but you also have the opportunity to demonstrate what you've done about it. This is called self cleansing.

Self cleansing is genuinely important and not enough businesses know about it. If a discretionary ground applies, you can set out the steps you've taken to address the issue, changes to personnel, new processes, remediation measures, evidence that it won't happen again. A well prepared self cleansing statement can allow a business to remain in a procurement process that it might otherwise have been excluded from. The key is to think about this in advance, not when you're halfway through filling in a selection questionnaire with a deadline looming.

I'll give you a real example of why this matters. When I was on the procurement side, a bidder submitted a response and declared that they had never had a contract terminated with a public sector body. During the evaluation process it came to light that this wasn't accurate. A contract had been terminated previously due to equipment failure and quality issues. They were excluded from the process.

Had they declared the termination at the outset, they would have had the opportunity to explain what happened and set out the self cleansing measures they had taken since, the changes they had made, the improvements to their processes, the evidence that the same thing wouldn't happen again. Whether those measures would have been deemed acceptable is impossible to say, that decision sits with the contracting authority and it would have depended entirely on what they said and how compelling their case was.

But by not declaring it, they took that option completely off the table. They eliminated themselves.

If you're not sure whether something needs to be declared, take advice. Declaring something you don't need to declare is far better than failing to declare something you should have.

Subcontractors, consortiums and relied upon entities

If you're bidding as part of a consortium, or if you're relying on another business to meet the selection criteria, their compliance position matters too. You'll typically need to provide the same declarations and information for any entity you're relying upon. This catches people out regularly. Have that conversation with any partners or subcontractors before you start, not when you're pulling the submission together the night before.

The common compliance areas

Beyond exclusion grounds, here are the areas that come up most often.

Quality, environmental and health and safety management systems. ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 are the most commonly referenced certifications. Many buyers will accept equivalence, a documented system that demonstrates the same standard of rigour without the formal certification. Whether you need the certification itself, equivalence, or neither depends on your market and the specific contracts you're targeting. In construction, health and safety accreditation is far more likely to be required than in consultancy or professional services. The research you've done on your target market will tell you what's expected in your space, so do that first before investing in anything.

Cyber Essentials. This is becoming an increasingly standard requirement, particularly for contracts involving data handling, digital services, or anything above £5 million in value. Since April 2025 it has been mandatory for suppliers bidding on central government contracts above that threshold. It's UK Government backed, relatively affordable to achieve, and something that genuinely protects your business as well as satisfying a compliance requirement. If you're targeting contracts where data or technology is involved, getting this in place sooner rather than later is a sensible move. Again, worth knowing if its needed before going ahead and spending time and resource but worth considering.

Industry specific accreditations. Beyond the ISO family there are sector specific accreditations that are recognised as a standard of excellence in certain industries and commonly expected by buyers. Know what's standard in your space.

Insurance levels. Businesses sometimes assume they need certain levels of cover in place before they can bid. In most cases, if you're successful you'll be given the opportunity to put the required cover in place before the contract starts. You do need to know what's likely to be required though, because it affects your cost assessment and your decision about whether bidding makes commercial sense.

Policies. Health and safety, equalities and diversity, environmental, data protection and GDPR, Modern Slavery Act compliance, Fair Work. These need to exist, be current, be properly signed off, and actually reflect how your business operates. A policy that was written three years ago and hasn't been looked at since is a liability, not an asset. On data protection, if you handle any personal data, and most businesses do, make sure your approach to GDPR is documented and up to date. Buyers want confidence that their data and the data of the people they serve will be handled responsibly.

There is no single compliance checklist

This is worth saying because I hear it a lot. There is no universal list of things you must have in place before you can bid. What you need depends on who your buyers are, what they're procuring, and what sector you're operating in.

That's why the market intelligence work we covered in the last article comes first. Understanding your buyers and what they typically ask for tells you what you actually need to have in place. A picture specific to your business and your market, not a generic checklist that may or may not be relevant to what you're going after.

And having the compliance in place is the foundation, not the finish line. It gets you to the scoring stage. Once you're through the door, everything comes down to how well you can demonstrate that you're the right supplier for this contract.

Understanding exactly how your response is going to be evaluated is where we go next.

Everything I share in this series is based on my own experience on both the buyer and the bidder side. I'd love to hear your views too. If something resonates, or if you see it differently, tell me in the comments.

I'm Mandy, founder of Millar Tender Solutions. I help growth-focussed businesses win public sector contracts, drawing on 20+ years of experience on the buyer side. I'm also an associate trainer with Supplier Development Programme Scotland and deliver bid readiness support through a number of Business Gateway Expert Help frameworks. If you want to talk about where your business is on its bid readiness journey, drop me a message.

Mandy Millar 09/07/2026 Mandy Millar 09/07/2026

Stop waiting for opportunities to find you!

Most businesses find out about a public sector opportunity when it goes live on the portal. They see the contract notice, check the deadline, and decide whether to go for it.

The problem with that approach isn't that it never works - sometimes it does. It's that by the time a contract notice is published, the best prepared bidders already have a head start. They know it's coming and have been getting ready. And you're starting from scratch with a deadline looming (probably around 30 days).

Building an opportunity pipeline changes that completely and in my view is an essential part of the bid readiness work you need to do to win consistently.

The further ahead you look, the better

Ideally you want to be looking not just weeks or months but years ahead.

That sounds ambitious but it's not as complicated as it sounds. If you know a significant framework is coming up in two years, you have time to invest to get yourself in the best position to win - nurturing relationships, getting the right processes in place, gaining relevant certifications, building your evidence base, resourcing up, bringing in external support if you need it. What that looks like will depend on lots of internal and external factors. But the key thing is - you're making strategic rather than reactive decision - with future growth in mind.

Of course, there is a risk that future procurement might not go ahead in three years time, as the market shifts or the needs of the buyer evolve. But if you know about it, you can monitor and review over that time and adjust your srategy as needed. Maybe the risk of not being ready outweighs the risk of allocating time and resource to something that never happens - only you can decide this for your own business.

Where to find useful information

The public sector contract advertising portals are the obvious starting point. In Scotland that's Public Contracts Scotland. In England, Find a Tender covers higher value contracts and Contracts Finder picks up smaller opportunities from £10k upwards, so which one you need depends on the value of what you're looking for. There's also Sell2Wales for Wales and eTendersNI for Northern Ireland. I predominantly work within Scotland but many of my clients are looking at opportunities across the wider UK so it's worth knowing where to look in each region. I've linked to all of them at the end of this article.

When we think of these portals, we generally think about live contract notices, telling us there is something we can bid for right now. But contract notices are only part of the picture.

Buyers can also publish advance notices at various stages before a procurement goes live. These might signal that something is coming in the future, invite the market to engage via a questionnaire or supplier event, or share early information about what's being planned. This is where you can get on a buyer's radar before the competition starts, and sometimes contribute to shaping what they eventually go to market with.

There are also other notice types worth being aware of, including innovation notices where buyers are actively looking for new or emerging solutions. These are worth watching if you're in a new or emerging sector or developing new innovative solutions.

Contract award notices are one of the most underused sources of intelligence. When a contract is awarded you can often find out who won, the contract value, how many suppliers bid, and what the evaluation criteria looked like. You can also often find out when that contract will end, which tells you roughly when it's likely to be retendered if its something that will be needed again. Over time this builds a really useful picture of who's winning in your space, what buyers are prioritising, and how their approach is shifting as well as when procurement activity is likely to happen.

Beyond the portals

Beyond the portals themselves, there are other places worth looking. Many public bodies publish procurement strategies that include their forward pipeline, giving you a view of what they're planning to buy over the coming years. Larger public bodies are often required to publish this information, and even where it's not mandatory some do it voluntarily. If you have a target buyer in mind, it's worth checking whether they've published anything like this.

Policy and funding announcements can also act as early signals. A new funding stream, a policy commitment, a change in legislation, these things often lead to procurement activity further down the line. Staying close to what's happening in your sector means you can sometimes see what's coming before it's formally announced.

What to do with the intelligence

The intelligence is only useful if you act on it.

Use it to understand what's coming and when. Use it to get a sense of who's currently winning in your space and what buyers in your sector seem to be prioritising. And then ask yourself honestly, are you ready for those opportunities? And if not, what needs to change before they become a live bid with 30 days to respond?

That might mean investing in a certification. It might mean building your evidence base over the next twelve months. It might mean bringing in support to help you prepare properly. It might just mean getting your compliance documents in order (which is exactly what the next article is about).

Links:

Public Contracts Scotland: publiccontractsscotland.gov.uk

Find a Tender: find-tender.service.gov.uk

Contracts Finder: contractsfinder.service.gov.uk

Sell2Wales: sell2wales.gov.wales

eTendersNI: etendersni.gov.uk

Mandy Millar 28/06/2026 Mandy Millar 28/06/2026

Should You Be Bidding for Public Sector Contracts?

Most bid advice jumps straight to here's how to write a winning response. And when bid or no bid does come up, it's usually framed around individual opportunities. Should we go for this one? Do we have the time? Is it a good fit?

But I think there's a bigger question that doesn't get asked often enough. Is the public sector actually the right avenue for growing your business at all?

I specialise in helping businesses win public sector contracts. If you decide it's not for you, I'm not going to make any more money from you. But I genuinely believe that helping you figure out whether this is the right route is part of my job. There's real value in getting that decision right before you invest in anything else. At least not right now. Or maybe never.

What would winning public contracts actually do for your business?

Start here. Not with the opportunity, but with what you actually want.

Public sector contracts can provide stability, in some cases a predictable income stream or pipeline of work, longer term relationships and a credible track record that opens other doors. For some businesses that's exactly what growth looks like.

But it's worth understanding the difference between winning a bid and actually making money. A contract win is not automatically a good commercial outcome. You can be appointed and receive zero work. The pipeline of work you were hoping for might never materialise, or might go to other suppliers who are better positioned, better known to the buyers calling off, or simply cheaper. That's a real outcome that doesn't get talked about enough.

Public contracts also come with requirements, reporting obligations, compliance expectations, performance monitoring, and a procurement process that takes real resource to navigate. If your business is at a stage where all of that feels like a distraction from what you're trying to build, that's worth sitting with.

The question isn't just can we win public contracts. It's does winning public contracts take us where we want to go.

Do your current business processes support what's being asked of you?

Public sector buyers will expect certain things as a baseline. Policies, processes, reporting capability. These aren't just tender questions. They reflect how your business actually operates. If there are genuine gaps, that's not a reason to walk away but it is a reason to build those foundations before you start bidding, not while you're in the middle of writing a response.

Do you have the resource to deliver from day one?

Public contracts don't always come with a warm up period. You win, you mobilise and you deliver. That means having the staff, the systems, the management capacity and the operational infrastructure to hit the ground running. For a growing SME that can be a significant ask, especially if the contract is larger than anything you've delivered before. It's worth being honest with yourself about this before you bid, not after you've won.

Can your business cashflow it?

This is the one that catches people out most often and it almost never gets talked about in bid advice. Public sector payment terms are generally 30 days from invoice, and that invoice typically comes after the work is done, not before. So you mobilise, you deliver, you invoice, and then you wait. Depending on what you're used to in your current market, that could feel familiar or it could be a significant shift. Either way, you need to be able to finance your delivery in the meantime. It's not a reason not to bid, but it is a reason to model it out honestly before you commit.

Is the return on investment going to be worth it?

Bidding costs time and money, whether that's your own time or the cost of bringing in support. Winning costs more time and money to deliver. And public sector contracts, while stable, aren't always the highest margin work you'll do.

It's also worth going beyond the headline contract value when you're assessing whether a bid is worth pursuing. The actual margin on a public sector contract can look very different once you factor in mobilisation costs, any TUPE obligations if you're taking on staff, reporting and compliance requirements, and the ongoing cost of contract management. What looks like good income on paper can sometimes be a much thinner return in practice. It doesn't need to be a complex financial model but a basic sense check on whether this contract is actually going to be profitable is worth doing before you commit to bidding. None of that makes public sector contracts a bad idea. But it does make them a decision worth making properly, with clear eyes, rather than just because the opportunity is there.

So how do you actually make the bid or no bid decision?

I think about this at three different levels.

The strategic level. Is public sector tendering the right route for this business, right now? This is the question this article is really about. It's worth revisiting periodically because the answer can change as your business grows and your capacity, processes and appetite evolve.

The opportunity level. For each individual tender that lands, does this specific contract make sense to pursue? Does it fit what we do, do we have the evidence to support a strong response, is our chance of winning realistic, and is the commercial return worth the investment of bidding?

The ongoing level. Bid or no bid isn't just a decision you make at the start. It's something you're reassessing throughout the process. At kickoff, do we actually have the resource available to submit a strong bid right now? At first draft, are there gaps we can't fill that mean we're unlikely to score well enough to win? These are valid points to stop, not just to push through regardless.

And sometimes two opportunities land at the same time and the real question becomes which one deserves your best effort. That's a prioritisation decision as much as a bid or no bid one.

One final thing

Sometimes the right answer to bid or no bid is no, and you go for it anyway. Because the learning is worth it. Because it gets you on the buyer's radar. Because it's a contract that means something to your business even if the odds aren't great.

That's fine. The difference is whether you're making that call consciously, with clear eyes, or whether you're just chasing every opportunity that lands because it's there.

The businesses that get the best results from public sector tendering are the ones who are deliberate about where they put their energy. Not just good at writing bids, but clear about which bids are worth writing.

Next up we're going into the practical side of bid readiness, starting with the stuff that gets businesses eliminated before anyone even reads their response.

Mandy Millar 22/06/2026 Mandy Millar 22/06/2026

Are You Ready to Bid for Public Contracts?

I want to start this series with something a bit different.

Most content you'll read about public sector tendering will tell you about the opportunity. Billions of pounds spent every year. Contracts of every size and type. A market that's open to businesses like yours.

And that's all true.

But before we get into any of that, I want to ask you a more honest question. Is bidding for public contracts actually the right move for your business, right now?

Because the answer isn't always yes. And I'd rather you understand that upfront than have you invest time, money and energy into something that isn't the right fit, at least not yet.

What I've learned from both sides of the table

I spent over 20 years working in public sector procurement, writing tenders, engaging with suppliers and contractors, evaluating bids - before I moved to the other side and started supporting businesses to win contracts.

What I've seen from both sides is this. The businesses that win consistently aren't always the most technically capable. They're the most ready. And readiness isn't the same thing as just being really good at what you do.

I've worked with clients who were genuinely outstanding at their work - strong delivery, happy customers, real results and still struggled in the public sector market. Not because they weren't good enough. Because they couldn't demonstrate what made them good, in the way that a formal evaluation process requires.

I've also seen the opposite. An incumbent supplier - already delivering a contract, who came to rebid and had almost nothing to show for the work they'd done. No data. No outcomes recorded. No evidence of the impact they'd made. They'd been so focused on delivering that they'd never stopped to capture it. And when it came to proving their value in writing, against a scoring matrix, in competition with other suppliers, they were in trouble.

Being good at the work and being able to prove it to someone who doesn't know you are two completely different skills. This series is about closing that gap.

But first, is this actually for you?

Public sector tendering isn't the right route for every business. Some businesses aren't ready yet. Some businesses will be ready because public contracts aren't the right thing for their business growth. Some might be better served by a different entry point entirely, like subcontracting or working within a supply chain, rather than bidding directly.

I'm not here to sell you the public sector dream. The opportunity is real, but so is the investment required to pursue it properly. Time, resource, preparation - and a genuine commitment to the process.

What I want to do in this series is give you enough honest information to make your own decision about whether this is right for your business, and if it is, what getting properly ready actually looks like.

What 'ready' actually means

I've been working with one client for almost two years. The end goal is a significant framework opportunity that we've known about and been building toward the whole time. By the time that tender comes to market, the preparation work will have been done long before the deadline clock starts.

That's what ready looks like at one end of the spectrum.

I've also worked with clients who've been presented with a live opportunity due in 30 days (or less) and we've gone for it together, sometimes successfully. But even when we've won, I've known that with more preparation behind us we'd have scored higher. We got there, but we left marks on the table.

Bid readiness isn't about being perfect before you start. It's about giving yourself the best possible platform before an opportunity lands, so that when it does, you're competing on the strength of your actual capability, not scrambling to demonstrate it under pressure.

What this series covers

Over the next six weeks I'm going to work through what bid readiness involves, from understanding whether public sector is right for your business, through to what happens after a bid is submitted and how you use that to keep improving.

Some articles will be practical. Some will be based on things I've seen from inside the evaluation room that most suppliers never get to hear. All of it comes from real experience, not theory.

There's also an honest conversation coming about direct tendering not being the only way into the public sector market. Because for some businesses, at least at this stage, it isn't.

If you're a business that sees a real opportunity in public contracts, has maybe had a go with limited success, and wants to understand what a more strategic approach actually looks like, this series is for you.

Let's start at the beginning.

Mandy Millar 27/02/2026 Mandy Millar 27/02/2026

Win Rates in Bidding: Why the Number Only Tells Part of the Story

It All Begins Here

When somebody first suggested I publish my bid win rate on my website, my initial reaction was honestly… I don’t actually know what it is.

Which probably sounds slightly ridiculous for someone working in bids.

But I think that’s part of growing a business sometimes. You spend so much time focused on delivery, supporting clients and getting through deadlines that you don’t always stop and build the systems and reporting side of things properly until later. So I ended up going back through every single bid I’d worked on since starting the business and reviewing the outcomes manually. Which, in hindsight, was probably a bigger job than I anticipated.

The number itself was interesting. My win rate now sits at 71%.

And yes, I completely understand why businesses ask that question when they’re looking for bid support. If you’re investing in a bid writer or bid consultant, of course you want to understand how likely you are to be successful. It makes total sense.

But the more I looked at the data, the more I realised that the headline percentage actually only tells a very small part of the story.

It doesn’t tell you how many losses there are v bids still awaiting an outcome, or those abandoned by the contracting authority that we’ll never know what the outcome would have been.

But it goes beyond interpretation of stats. Because if the conversation stops at “what’s your win rate?”, neither side really gets much insight into how likely that particular business is to be successful moving forward.

And I think that’s the more important conversation.

What really matters is understanding where that business is currently sitting in terms of bid readiness, what they’re trying to achieve, whether they’re pursuing the right opportunities in the first place, and what gaps might exist that need addressed before they’re realistically in the best position to compete.

Sometimes businesses come into bidding assuming success is mainly about writing. And of course, writing matters. Strategy matters. Structure matters. Communication matters. But often the bigger issues sit underneath that.

Do they have the evidence needed to support strong responses? Do they have relevant case studies? Are their operational processes mature enough? Is their pricing competitive? Are they actually ready for the level of contract they’re bidding for? Those are the things that tend to have the biggest impact on outcomes over time.

One of the most interesting things I found when reviewing my own bid results was that quite a large proportion of the unsuccessful bids had actually scored very strongly on quality. In several cases, they were top scoring or joint top scoring technically, but lost out commercially on price.

And that’s where win rates become quite nuanced. Because if you only look at the final outcome, it’s easy to assume a loss means the bid itself wasn’t strong. But procurement is rarely that straightforward. Sometimes clients are pricing themselves out of opportunities before the submission even goes in. Sometimes they’re targeting opportunities that aren’t quite the right fit yet. Sometimes they’re still developing their evidence base or operational maturity.

I think there’s a tendency in bidding to focus heavily on outcomes - wins and losses - but less focus on whether businesses are actually building the foundations needed for sustainable success long term. Because bidding successfully is rarely just about one tender.

It’s about developing:

stronger evidence
clearer messaging
better internal systems
more realistic bid/no bid decisions
better understanding of where you’re competitive
and sometimes, being honest about where you’re not quite ready yet

I’ve also realised how important it is for businesses themselves to track this information properly. Not just consultants like me monitoring our own performance, but businesses looking at:

what they’re winning
what they’re losing
where they consistently score well
where they struggle
whether they’re pursuing the right opportunities
and what patterns are emerging over time

Those patterns are where the useful insight usually sits. A business might discover they consistently perform strongly in one sector but struggle in another. Or they may realise they’re repeatedly losing on commercial scoring despite strong quality responses. Or perhaps they’re spending huge amounts of resource bidding for opportunities that were never realistically winnable in the first place. That’s why the bid/no bid process matters so much.

And if I’m honest, looking back at some of the bids I’ve worked on over the last few years, there are probably opportunities that maybe shouldn’t have gone forward at all. Not because the businesses weren’t good businesses, but because they weren’t quite ready for that particular opportunity at that particular time. But equally, there’s value in that learning too.

Sometimes businesses need to go through the process, experience the gaps firsthand, receive the feedback and understand what’s required before they can really move forward strategically. Losing can be frustrating, but it can also be incredibly clarifying.

One thing I’ve become much more aware of since starting my own business is that bidding is often treated as something reactive. A tender lands, everyone scrambles, documents get pulled together, deadlines become stressful, and people hope for the best. But the businesses who tend to perform most consistently are usually the ones investing in readiness before the opportunity even arrives.

They’re building their evidence libraries.
They’re refining their messaging.
They’re understanding their differentiators.
They’re reviewing pricing models.
They’re learning from previous submissions.

And over time, that preparation compounds.

So yes, win rates matter. Of course they do. They’re useful indicators and they absolutely should be tracked. But I think what matters much more is the conversation underneath the number.

Why are bids winning?
Why are they losing?
Where are the patterns?
What needs strengthened?
Are the right opportunities being pursued?
And what does success actually look like for that business long term?

A headline percentage on its own can never really answer those questions - and honestly, I think the deeper conversations are far more interesting anyway.