Bidding for work bigger than you: consortia, primes and subcontracting

A great deal of public work is packaged at a size that a small business cannot deliver alone. That is a reason not to bid alone. It is not a reason not to bid.

Route one: be a subcontractor to a prime

The most common route, and the most under-worked. Primes assemble their supply chain while they are writing the bid, which means the window is before the deadline, not after the award. Watch the pipeline for large contracts in your category, work out from previous awards who is likely to bid, and approach them early with something specific: what you deliver, where, at what capacity, and what evidence you bring to their response.

Being named in a winning bid also has a second benefit — the buyer sees your name, and the relationship starts with a delivery record rather than a cold approach.

Route two: a consortium

Several suppliers bid together, usually with one leading. This works well where the requirement spans capabilities no single member has, and badly where it is used to paper over a gap none of you can fill. Buyers assess the consortium as a whole, which means the weakest member's financial standing and compliance record matter to everyone.

Agree the unglamorous things in writing before you bid: who leads, who signs, how the work and the money divide, what happens if a member withdraws, and who owns the client relationship. A consortium that has not discussed those is a dispute waiting for a contract to attach itself to.

Route three: bid for the lot, not the contract

Where a requirement is divided into lots, you may be able to bid for one or two rather than all. Read the lotting rules carefully: some competitions cap how many lots one supplier can win, some allow bids across lots with a discount for multiples, and some evaluate each lot independently. A well-chosen single lot is often more winnable than a stretched bid for the whole.

What buyers will check

Whichever route you take, expect the buyer to look through the arrangement rather than at it. They will want to know who is actually delivering, what proportion of the work sits with subcontractors, and how the prime or lead will manage them. Exclusion grounds and compliance checks extend to key subcontractors, so a problem in your partner is a problem in your bid.

Say what the arrangement really is. Bids that present a subcontracted delivery model as in-house capability tend to unravel at exactly the wrong moment, and now leave a published record when they do.

Start with one relationship, not a strategy

The practical first step is small: identify two or three primes who win the work you would like a share of, and make contact before their next bid rather than after it. One good supply-chain relationship is worth more than a partnering strategy nobody has time to execute.

What a prime is actually looking for

Approaching primes works far better when you understand what they need from a supply-chain partner, which is not usually the lowest price. They are assembling a bid under time pressure and they need certainty: capability they can describe accurately, evidence they can quote in their response, coverage in a geography or a specialism they lack, and a partner who will not create a compliance problem.

So make the approach easy to say yes to. A short capability summary, the geography and capacity you can genuinely cover, your accreditations and insurance levels, and one or two comparable contracts with figures. That is more useful to a bid writer than a brochure, and it can be dropped straight into their response.

Protect yourself in the arrangement

Subcontracting to a prime puts a company between you and the public buyer, which changes your exposure. Two things are worth settling before you commit: what happens if the prime is late paying you — the 30-day implied term applies down public supply chains, and it is worth saying so in writing at the outset — and what happens to your position if the prime loses or exits the contract.

Where you are named in a winning bid, ask to see the parts of the response that describe what you will do. You will be held to them, and it is not unusual for a prime's description of a partner's role to be more ambitious than the partner realised.

Consortium or subcontract: how to choose

The rough test is where the value and the risk sit. If your part is a discrete, well-defined slice of the work, subcontracting is simpler and faster to arrange. If the requirement genuinely needs two businesses jointly to be credible — and particularly if the buyer will assess the combined financial standing and experience — a consortium is the honest structure, and it is worth the extra effort of agreeing terms.

What does not work is a consortium formed the week of the deadline to fill a gap neither party can evidence. Buyers see a great many of those.