Procurement glossary · Procedures and routes to market
Open procedure
A single-stage competition in which any supplier may submit a tender and there is no separate shortlisting round. Selection and award are assessed together from one submission. It is one of the two competitive routes under the Procurement Act 2023 and it existed in similar form under the previous regulations.
What it means in practice
The open procedure is the simplest route and it suits requirements where the authority does not expect an unmanageable number of bids and does not need to narrow the field before evaluating detail.
For a supplier the appeal is obvious: there is no gate to get through before you can compete on quality. The cost is equally obvious. You write the full submission, including everything an authority would otherwise have asked only of a shortlist, before you know whether you have any chance at all.
This makes bid or no bid discipline more important on open procedures rather than less. On a restricted or staged procedure, a modest first-stage effort buys information about whether to commit. On an open procedure there is no such staging, so the qualification work has to be done by you, before you start writing, from the published documents.
Practically, read the selection requirements first and confirm you meet every one of them: turnover, insurance levels, accreditations, comparable contract references. All of those are pass or fail, and failing one of them after writing the whole quality response is the most expensive way to discover it.
Where suppliers get caught
Writing the quality responses before checking the mandatory selection requirements. On an open procedure both arrive in the same pack and the quality questions are the interesting part, so they get attention first. An insurance level you cannot meet or a reference you cannot supply will disqualify a submission no matter how well the method statements score.
Common questions
Is the open procedure still available under the Procurement Act 2023?
Yes. It is one of the two competitive routes the Act provides, alongside the competitive flexible procedure.
Should an SME bid an open procedure?
Often yes, because there is no shortlisting round that filters on size or track record before you get to compete on quality. The trade-off is that the full writing effort comes before any signal about your chances, so qualify hard against the published selection requirements before you start.
Related terms
- Competitive flexible procedure
- Restricted procedure
- Award criteria versus selection criteria
- Bid or no bid
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.