Leading electronic procurement services provider Millstream has reported a rise in the number of construction tenders over the past 12 months, meaning more opportunities for UK companies to secure work from the public sector.
Millstream - which is exhibiting at Ecobuild 2014, the leading trade show for sustainable design, construction, energy and the built environment - has reported a 6% increase in public sector construction tenders in the UK and Ireland over the last year.
This rose to 12,839 available contracts in 2013 from 12,045 the previous year, with tenders being posted by the government, local authorities, emergency services, health trusts, housing associations and other public sector organisations.
Millstream has also noted an increase in eco-construction tenders, including energy efficiency consultancy, Combined Heat and Power plants, biomass heating, geothermal heat pumps and the provision of solar panels.
Around 70% of the construction tenders published by Millstream over the past year have been below the EU threshold of £4.3million, which means they do not need to be advertised in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU).
Tim Williams, managing director of Millstream, says this means that customers of Tenders Direct face less competition and consequently much more likely to win new business.
“EU legislation means that contracting authorities must adhere to transparent, non-discriminatory and proportional principles when purchasing goods and services. They must also advertise all contracts above threshold values in the OJEU, which is set at £4.3million for large-scale construction tenders and £112,000 for all other supplies and services,” he said.
“Lower value tenders are therefore particularly attractive to SMEs as there is less competition from major contractors or overseas companies.”
Millstream will showcase its Tenders Direct service to residential, commercial and industrial construction companies at Ecobuild, which is being held at London’s ExCel.
Last year the event attracted more than 43,500 visitors from 121 countries.
The Tenders Direct team manually categorise all tenders to ensure that only highly relevant opportunities personalised to individual preferences and areas of specialism are sent to subscribers every day.
Tenders Direct also provides a one-to-one helpdesk to ensure that customers are finding the tenders they want.
“Our aim is to ensure that if a tender is published anywhere, we will have that information available for our subscribers so they don’t have to worry about missing any opportunities, then our team can help them to understand and successfully complete the tendering process from start to finish,” said Tim.
“Construction is one of the largest sectors for procurement so Ecobuild is an important event for us to attend so we can meet the key players in this area of construction.”
Visit Millstream on stand N1802 at Ecobuild 2014 from March 4-6.
For more information, visit www.tendersdirect.co.uk or the Ecobuild website at www.ecobuild.co.uk