In this article Small and Medium Size Enterprise (SME) champion, Steph Porter, explains how Crown Commercial Service assesses supplier bids to be on CCS agreements.
Published 1 September 2025
Last updated 1 September 2025
The public sector spends billions each year buying goods and services from the private sector. As a supplier, being awarded a place on a Crown Commercial Service (CCS) commercial agreement is a great way to potentially:
- increase your revenue
- enhance your reputation
- grow your organisation
Can Small and Medium Sized Enterprises become public sector suppliers?
Yes, small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) can become public sector suppliers. Public sector procurement is not only for large organisations. In fact many suppliers are:
- small and medium-sized enterprises
- voluntary, community, and social enterprises
- micro-businesses
CCS encourages organisations of all sizes to become suppliers. Our bidding and award process aims to foster healthy competition and bring the right market expertise to offer customers quality and value.
How do we assess and award suppliers who bid for a place on Crown Commercial Service commercial agreements?
Each commercial agreement is different, but as a general rule, suppliers must demonstrate that they can provide the goods and services required to an agreed standard.
Tenders are awarded based on the defined set of award criteria, outlined in the associated tender documentation.
CCS follows a 5-step process from when tenders are received to when they are assessed and awarded:
- Initial compliance check: ensuring the tender meets all of the Procurement Act 2023 conditions of participation.
- Technical assessment: assessing the quality, methodology, and technical approach.
- Price assessment: different assessors from those who assess the quality responses will calculate your price score using the assessment methodology.
- Scoring and ranking: assigning scores based on the assessment methodology.
Issuing the assessment summaries to all bidders.
How do we ensure bidders have all the information they need to submit a bid?
Each bidder gets essential information on how to bid. This is called a bid pack. The bid pack includes information on:
- timelines
- clarification questions
- how to submit the tender
- what you need to submit
- the structure of the competition
- how CCS will assess tenders and the competition rules
In the bid pack, Attachment 2 (how to tender) and Attachment 2d (quality questionnaire) provide bidders with a range of questions and associated scoring criteria for assessment.
CCS uses quality questions to assess aspects like supplier experience, technical capability, and proposed solutions, ensuring a holistic evaluation.
What is the clarification period and how does it help Small and Medium Sized Enterprises?
The clarification period allows time for potential suppliers to ask questions, ensuring they have a full understanding of the bid back requirements before submitting their bid. This period begins immediately after the invitation to tender is released.
You should ensure that you make a note of the clarification period deadline and that you ask questions before it expires.
Five tips for Small and Medium sized Enterprises when responding to the award criteria
- Read each question thoroughly and ensure you fully understand the award criteria, sub-criteria, assessment methodology, response guidance and marking scheme before starting to respond.
- Responses should be limited to and focused on the sub criteria, try to avoid providing generalised statements, for example lists of’ what’ you do with no explanation of ‘how’ or irrelevant information.
- If the question is broken down into component parts, break down your answer into the same component parts and clearly mark them.
- Adhere to the character and/or word limits. Anything over the character count will be excluded from the assessment.
- There may be quality questions that will be assessed as ‘pass or fail’. If you answer no to these questions, your tender will not progress further.
How does CCS choose and assign assessors?
CCS will work with stakeholders before the invitation to tender is released to gather details of potential assessors. All assessors will be issued with an ‘assessors declarations form’ to record any conflicts of interest, detail relevant experience, qualifications and seniority.
Once assessors have been chosen they will be assigned particular questions to match their expertise and experience.
All assessors will be given identical training, delivered by CCS, to ensure a consistent approach is always followed.
What happens during the assessment of bids process?
Once the deadline for bid submissions expires and compliance checks have been concluded, the assessment process will commence. The assessment process will take place independently, with no interaction between assessors.
- each assessor will independently evaluate bidders’ responses to the quality questions assigned to them using the award criteria provided in the bid pack and assessment methodology, giving a mark and a reason for their mark for each question
- once assessors have evaluated all bids, CCS will arrange for the assessors to meet for “consensus” with a CCS facilitator to discuss their marks and their reasons for them – this will continue until each assessor can reach a consensus regarding the final mark and a note recorded of the rationale for this to enable CCS to provide feedback to the bidder in the assessment summary
- the price assessment will run alongside the award criteria assessment – CCS will calculate bidders final score by adding the quality score to the price score by using the published assessment methodology (this is outlined in Attachment 2 – how to tender)
What can bidders expect to receive in an assessment summary and how does it help them?
Before the contract award notice and standstill period, bidders will be provided with an assessment summary, which explains the outcome of their tender assessment.
The purpose of the assessment summary is:
- to give bidders enough information to understand why their tender was successful or unsuccessful
- to help unsuccessful bidders understand how the Most Advantageous Tender (MAT) was chosen, based on the award criteria and assessment methodology
- to ensure feedback to bidders is consistent, fair, open and transparent and allows bidders
- to improve on future bidding responses
- to provide unsuccessful bidders with the best indication of the gap between their unsuccessful tender and what was required to be successful
What is a standstill period and why is it necessary?
The standstill period takes place after the assessment summaries have been issued to bidders.
It is a time period of at least 8 working days when CCS is not permitted to enter into the contract with any of the successful bidders.
During the standstill period, bidders can ask questions that relate to CCS’s decision to award.
What happens at the agreement award stage and what do bidders need to do?
After the standstill period, successful bidders will receive their framework contract through a DocuSign email.
Bidders must sign the framework contract and provide the appropriate certifications and evidence of insurance requirements within the required timescales.
Find out more about bidding on our agreements
For more information when bidding on a CCS agreement please follow the instructions in the bid pack. Ask clarification questions if needed and read all of the questions published and the responses.
To learn more about how CCS is levelling the playing field for suppliers of all sizes download our digital brochure.
This article is part of our Supplier Specifics series containing helpful advice on how to supply products or services to the public sector.
We always welcome feedback, suggestions or queries. These can be submitted to smefeedback@crowncommercial.gov.uk