Procurement glossary · Procedures and routes to market
Lotting
Dividing a procurement into separate parts that suppliers can bid for individually. Lots may be by service, geography, value band or discipline. Lotting is how smaller suppliers get access to large frameworks, and choosing which lots to bid is usually a bigger decision than how well you write.
Also called Lots, Lot structure.
What it means in practice
Authorities lot requirements to widen the supplier base and to let specialists bid what they actually do. For a supplier this is the main mechanism by which a large framework becomes accessible.
The lot decision dominates outcome. Bidding three lots you can evidence deeply beats bidding eight to look substantial, because evaluators score depth of evidence per lot, not breadth of ambition. Thin evidence spread across many lots produces a set of middling scores and no places.
Read the supplier numbers per lot before deciding. An unlimited lot means a compliant, well-evidenced submission secures a place. A capped lot is a ranked competition where merely adequate loses. Those are different bids and they deserve different levels of investment.
Check also whether lots are exclusive, whether winning one bars you from another, and whether there is a maximum number of lots any supplier may hold. Those rules are published and they change the optimal strategy completely.
Where suppliers get caught
Bidding every lot you are arguably eligible for. It reads as unfocused, it dilutes the evidence, and it multiplies the writing effort at exactly the point when quality per answer decides the result. Pick the lots where your references are closest to the scope and commit the effort there.
Common questions
How many lots should I bid?
As many as you can evidence with genuinely comparable contracts, and no more. For most suppliers that is two to four. Evaluators assess depth per lot, so breadth without evidence costs rather than helps.
Does bidding more lots improve my chances?
Not usually. It improves your chances of a place only where you have real, distinct evidence for each. Otherwise it splits finite writing time across more answers and lowers the score on all of them.
Related terms
If a tender in front of you turns on this, send us the documents and the deadline and we will tell you honestly whether it is worth bidding. Call 020 3668 5488, or read the rest of the UK procurement glossary.