Public contracts are not just for big companies

Every government body in Europe has to publish what it buys. Most of it is small, and most small suppliers never look.

The publication requirement is the opportunity

Public bodies cannot quietly hand work to a friend. Above a fairly low threshold they are legally required to publish what they intend to buy, who is buying it, and by when bids must arrive. In the EU that goes to Tenders Electronic Daily; in the UK it goes to Contracts Finder; for donor-funded work in much of Africa, Asia and Latin America it goes to the World Bank's procurement notices.

All three are public, free and searchable by country. Tens of thousands of live notices at any moment.

Most people picture the wrong contracts

The word "tender" summons an image of a motorway or a hospital IT system, and those exist. But the same feed carries a municipality wanting a website refreshed, a school district buying translation, a regional health authority commissioning a training video, a council needing a photographer for a season, a ministry procuring a data-entry exercise.

These are ordinary jobs. The reason they look intimidating is the paperwork around them, not the work inside them.

Subcontracting is the realistic first move

Bidding for a public contract as a single person with no track record is usually a poor use of a fortnight. The better move is to read the notices for who is likely to WIN them, and approach that firm.

A company assembling a bid needs specific things it may not have in house: a specialist section written, a translation, a survey run, a piece of design. They are working to a published deadline that you can see. Contacting them the week a notice goes live, with the notice reference in the subject line, is one of the few cold approaches that arrives at exactly the right moment.

Read the deadline before anything else

Every notice carries a date by which responses must arrive. If it is next week, it is too late to be useful to anybody. If it is six weeks out, whoever is bidding is assembling their team right now, and that is the window.

Which notices are published where you live is not the same everywhere, and it is worth checking rather than assuming: coverage country by country sets out what is actually watched in each market.