Detailed heat mapping
Procurement competition highest for larger contracts, specialist and mid-size contractors, and Yorkshire & Humber and South West
Our key findings
Sector
The retail sector shows the least competitive routes to market and infrastructure the highest
Size of contract
The lowest competitive routes to market are reported for contracts valued between £30, and £60m.
Turnover of contractor
The lowest competitive routes to market are reported for contractors with turnover between £75m and £150m.
Regions
Yorkshire and Humber and the South West are the regions with the lowest competitive routes to market
“We are an SME working under the Building Safety Act’s higher-risk building limit. Our opportunities have increased significantly this year and our supply chain is hungry, due to the slowdown with Tier 1/large projects.”
SME contractor
In this section we map the RLB Procurement Competitiveness Score to micro-level project attributes.
The RLB Procurement Competitiveness Score is a measure of the level of open competition in tender processes, and seeks to display graphically the likely market acceptance of a proposed or selected procurement option.
Lower values (shaded red) reflect less competition being driven through tenders, for example negotitation. Higher values (shaded green) reflect more competition being driven through processes for example single stage tenders.
The level of competition may be a reflection of client ‘push’ (what procurement path may best achieve project objectives) or market ‘pull’ (what path the contracting market may best tolerate).
Heat map by project attribute
What it means for projects
Clients with objectives or standing orders pushing them along a particular route to market may struggle to find interest if that part of the market is not capable and geared up to win work that way. Procurement, after all, is not a ‘one size fits all’ approach.
Our data, for instance, shows very small contractors having a high competitiveness score. In some cases, they will not have the teams to ramp up to two-stage procurement routes and may prefer a more time-efficient single-stage route, particularly for smaller projects.
What it means for client outcomes
Client outcomes may be independently achieved of the route to market. However, the route to market and method of delivering value may dictate a different approach for communicating those outcomes.
On smaller contracts, details may need to be more concise and monitoring mechanisms simpler. But on complex two-stage projects with early contractor involvement, the contractor may be able to help define the client value outcomes.
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