Find pre-tender opportunities

There are three: the Pipeline Notice (UK1), the Preliminary Market Engagement Notice (UK2), and the Planned Procurement Notice (UK3). All three are published before a procurement begins, and they can appear in any order because each has a different trigger. Together they give suppliers early sight of contracts long before a tender notice lands.

A Pipeline Notice is compulsory for any contracting authority that expects to spend more than £100 million on relevant contracts in the coming financial year. It must be published within 56 days of the start of the financial year and lists the contracts valued at £2 million or above that the authority plans to bring to market over the next 18 months. It is the broadest forward look at where large buyers intend to spend.

A PME Notice tells the market that a buyer intends to run, or has already run, preliminary market engagement: consulting suppliers before writing the tender. Where a buyer carries out that engagement, it must either publish this notice before the tender notice or give its reasons for not doing so in the tender notice. For suppliers it marks the point where requirements can still be shaped.

A Planned Procurement Notice is an optional announcement that a contracting authority intends to publish a tender notice. If it is published at least 40 days and no more than 12 months before the tender notice, it qualifies the buyer to shorten the tendering period to as little as ten days. It signals a specific tender is coming and roughly when.

Only the Pipeline Notice is strictly mandatory, and only for authorities over the £100 million threshold. The Preliminary Market Engagement Notice is required whenever a buyer conducts market engagement, unless it justifies the omission in the tender notice. The Planned Procurement Notice is always optional.

PINs have been replaced under the Procurement Act 2023. The Planned Procurement Notice now fulfils the similar function of signalling an upcoming procurement. The early market engagement that a PIN used to cover has been split out into the separate Preliminary Market Engagement Notice, so the single old notice is now effectively two.

The pre-tender, or pre-procurement, stage is everything a buyer does before publishing a tender notice. In practice that can include filing a Pipeline Notice, running and publishing preliminary market engagement, and issuing a Planned Procurement Notice ahead of the tender. For suppliers, this window is the chance to research the buyer, understand priorities, and open a conversation before the formal competition starts.