Guide · 13 July 2026 · 4 min read
The tender is the exam, not the course
If the first conversation happens after the notice is published, you are sitting an exam for a course someone else taught.
Public procurement is designed to look like it starts at the notice. It does not. The budget was argued for a year earlier, the specification borrowed language from advisers already in the room, and the evaluators formed views about credible suppliers long before the portal opened. The formal process is where positions get confirmed.
What pre-positioning actually is
Nothing exotic: knowing the organisation before it buys. Following its planning applications, board papers and programme announcements. Meeting the people who will live with the outcome, not to sell but to understand the problem in their words. Publishing or presenting something useful on exactly that problem. When the notice lands, you are the firm whose name is already on the whiteboard.
Make it a system, not a heroic habit
One rainmaker doing this instinctively is a person; a firm doing it is a pipeline. That means signals watched systematically, each target account owned by a named person, and pre-positioning actions tracked with the same seriousness as bid deadlines. The work is unglamorous and it is where the win rate is actually set.
By tender day the question is rarely who is best. It is who was already there.