Building a tender

Basics

What you want, and where.

The kind of requirement matters more than it looks. Goods, a service, works, or a composite of them — this sets what bidders expect to be pricing. So does the activity type: a procurement, a consulting engagement, an implementation, or ongoing maintenance are four different commercial conversations.

Then the category and industry, the quantity and unit, and the location — or a mark that the work is remote, in which case location stops mattering.

Specifications

This is where a tender is won or lost as an instrument.

Specifications are structured fields, not prose. Each one has a name, a value, and a type — a number, a range, a currency amount, a date, a boolean, and so on — with an optional unit and a hint for anyone who might misread it.

That structure is what makes bids comparable. A bidder responding to a field called "Delivery lead time, days" with a number is giving you something you can sort. The same information buried in a covering letter is not.

You can also attach documents — drawings, existing specifications, site photographs — add a short summary of what the specification amounts to, and pull out a handful of key highlights for people scanning.

Eligibility

Who may bid. Its own page, because it is the section that most often decides whether a tender succeeds: Eligibility rules.

Budget

What you are prepared to spend and how you will pay, including whether bidders get to see any of it. See Budget and payment.

Publishing

The timetable and the audience.

When it opens, and when it closes. You can have it close automatically at a stated time, which is the honest option — a deadline that quietly extends while a favoured bidder finishes is the oldest trick in procurement and everybody recognises it.

Public or limited. Public means any eligible business can find and bid on it. Limited narrows the audience. Limited is legitimate — for a specialised requirement, or a shortlist you already trust — but it narrows your prices too.