The UK’s total annual national spending with SMEs on public procurement is around £21Bn1 . But how do you as an SME find new business opportunities in the often complex world of public procurement?

We started with these statistics to illustrate the vast amount of public spend won by companies every day through public tendering. 100,000 of which are, like you, micro, small, and medium sized businesses (SMEs). Do the maths and you will see that most of the public purse is spent by the government with the UK’s very largest companies. There are good reasons for that. SMEs don’t have the capacity to build hospitals and roads, run prisons, or manage huge logistical requirements to keep a country moving. 

However, SMEs can and do help deliver many of these large projects, such as High Speed 2 (HS2) and the Elizabeth Line as part of the supply chains of the larger companies which are in charge of each project. Direct spending with SMEs – the amount won by a small company winning a bid – is actually smaller than indirect spending (the spend through supply chains). Many smaller companies already work on public sector contracts as suppliers, but wouldn’t consider bidding directly for work through tendering. Tendering for public sector work directly or looking for places on supply chains is very similar to the way companies win new business in the private sector. It just needs a bit of time to understand the process and provide the right responses that help SMEs win the hundreds of opportunities that appear every week.