Why Bids Fail on Pagabo Frameworks: 7 Reasons, Tested

Glaxtons Consulting

Pagabo 2026 results · Reasons and evidence

Why suppliers miss out on Pagabo framework places: seven reasons, and how we know each one

By Jean-Pascal Olivier, Co-Founder and Director, Glaxtons Consulting. Published 9 October 2026.

There is no published list of why individual firms lost, so every article on this topic is partly opinion. This one separates the two. Three of the seven reasons below are visible in the Developer-Led award notice (lot choice, lot count and the concentration of value). Four are practitioner judgement from reviewing assessment summaries, and they are labelled that way.

1. The wrong lot for the evidence (evidenced by the notice)

Appointment rates on the Developer-Led framework ran from 45.2 per cent on Lot 7 to 100 per cent on Lot 2. A firm that entered the two crowded advisory lots needed a stronger case than one that entered Lot 4, where 25 of 28 bidders were appointed. Lot choice is the single biggest controllable factor in the data.

Lot	Advertised value	Bids	Appointed	Not appointed	Appointment rate
Lot 1 Development Consultants	£47.6m	29	14	15	48.3 per cent
Lot 2 Development Legal Providers	£47.6m	10	10	0	100.0 per cent
Lot 3 SPV Schemes up to 100m	£2.18bn	34	27	7	79.4 per cent
Lot 4 SPV Schemes of 100m or more	£4.51bn	28	25	3	89.3 per cent
Lot 5 Development Agreement Schemes of up 50m	£2.72bn	41	29	12	70.7 per cent
Lot 6 Development Agreement Schemes of 50m or more	£16.45bn	29	23	6	79.3 per cent
Lot 7 Development Management Services contracts	£47.6m	31	14	17	45.2 per cent
All lots	£26bn	202	142	60	70.3 per cent

76 distinct organisations bid, 52 were appointed and 24 were not appointed to any lot. The lot figures count each bid to each lot, so they exceed the number of organisations.

Source: Find a Tender contract award notice 094430-2026 , published 6 October 2026, read on 2026-10-09 with scripts/pagabo_results.py. Bids are the lot bids recorded in the notice. Only counts are shown; unsuccessful bidders are not named.

2. Entering too many, or too few, lots (evidenced by the notice)

The average bidder entered 2.7 lots, and the average appointed firm holds 2.7. Sixteen firms were appointed to one lot only, and 23 to four or more. Both strategies worked. Entering six lots with the same case study for each does not, because every lot needs its own evidence of scale and type.

3. Missing the value concentration (evidenced by the notice)

Lot 6 carries about 63 per cent of the framework's advertised value. A bid that put its effort into smaller lots could be appointed and still hold a place on very little of the pipeline.

4. Evidence that does not match the value band (practitioner view)

Case studies of a £4m project in an answer for a £50m lot read as undersized. The evaluator is looking for comparable scale, complexity and client type, and a mismatch is a common reason a quality answer scores in the middle of the range.

5. Social value and carbon written as an appendix (practitioner view)

Pagabo's appointed suppliers use its ImpactOS platform for social value, which tells you the buyer measures it. Answers that describe social value in general terms, rather than committing to measured outcomes tied to the contract, lose marks that are easy to keep.

6. Generic quality answers (practitioner view)

An answer that could be pasted into any tender scores like one. Evaluators mark against the question as asked, and the highest scores go to answers that quote the contract context, name the people and give the numbers.

7. A pricing position the evaluation did not reward (practitioner view)

Where price carries 40 per cent, as on Major Works, a firm that bid on its day rates alone, without a basis of pricing, can lose ranking position even with strong quality. Pricing is part of the story, and the assessment summary shows which way it cut.

What to take from this

If your assessment summary shows a low score on questions of the type in reasons 4 to 7, that is fixable inside a month. If it shows a pass/fail failure on a compliance gate, that is a different job: certification or financial standing, which takes longer and needs a different plan. Our compliance and certification support covers the second kind.

Questions suppliers ask

What is the most common reason for failing a framework tender?

From the Developer-Led data, lot choice mattered most: appointment rates ran from 45.2 to 100 per cent. From reviewing assessment summaries, the most common scoring failure is evidence that does not match the scale or type the question asked for.

Can you tell me why I lost without seeing my assessment summary?

No, and nobody honestly can. The summary is the only document that shows how you were scored.

Missed a Pagabo place, or have a deadline inside two weeks?

Send us your availability for a Microsoft Teams call. Bring your assessment summary or your tender pack and we will tell you, in that first conversation, what the data says about your position and which route is worth your time. If a deadline cannot be met we will say so before any fee is agreed.

Send us your availability 020 3668 5488

Our record: a 93 per cent success rate across 500 plus submissions, 2022 to 2025, against an industry average of 60 to 75 per cent (APMP and Bid Solutions).

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