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RFP vs tender · UK procurement vocabulary · updated 17 August 2026

RFP vs tender: one is a word, one is a procedure

An RFP asks you to propose a solution. A tender asks you to bid on one the buyer has already specified. That is the real distinction and it survives everywhere.

But if the buyer is a UK public body, the label on the front of the pack is the least binding thing in it. “Request for proposal” appears nowhere in the Procurement Act 2023 — and you can check that in about thirty seconds. Below, we show you how, and what to read instead.

The short answer first Show me the search
Where “RFP” is a defined term
Bar length encodes how formally each named instrument defines “request for proposals” — from naming it as a numbered procurement method down to not containing the phrase at all. It is not a quantity of anything. Every row is cited in full below.
Scroll to descend
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Most people arrive here needing one paragraph. Here it is, before anything else.

The short answer

The difference is how much the buyer has already decided. Everything else follows from that.

A request for proposal is issued when the buyer knows the outcome it wants but not the method. It describes a problem and asks you to propose a solution, which means the proposals it receives are not directly comparable line by line — part of what is being evaluated is your approach. A tender is issued when the specification is already fixed. It describes what the buyer wants delivered and asks you to bid on delivering it, which means the bids are comparable and price does more of the work.

In ordinary commercial usage that is the whole distinction and it is a useful one. In UK public procurement it is still true as a description of intent — and it stops being the thing that governs you.

What governs you is the procedure the contracting authority is running, which is published in the tender notice. It sets your deadline, whether there is a selection stage, whether the buyer can negotiate, what you are entitled to be told afterwards, and how long you have to challenge. A UK buyer may well head its document “Request for Proposal” — plenty do, especially in consultancy and technology — and it changes none of that.

So the practical rule is short: read the notice, not the noun.

If you take one thing
The title of the document is marketing. The tender notice and its associated tender documents are the legal instrument. When they disagree, the notice wins.
Is an RFP the same as a tender?
Not as concepts — one asks for your method, the other for your price on the buyer’s method. But in UK public work they are not opposites either, because an RFP-titled document is still run as one of the Act’s competitive tendering procedures. What the Act actually offers.
Does the word change my rights?
No. Your entitlement to an assessment summary, to a standstill period and to challenge comes from the Act and from the procedure being run, not from what the pack is called.
If you are outside the UK public sector
Then the ordinary distinction in the first paragraph is the answer, and the rest of this page is context. Private buyers use both words freely and neither carries obligations beyond the contract you sign.

What a UK public buyer actually calls it

This is the translation most comparison pages skip, and it is the part that changes what you do on Monday.

The advertisement RFPAn invitation, a portal listing, or an email to a shortlist the buyer already had. The ActA tender notice (s.21), published on the central digital platform. Publication is a duty, not a courtesy. [2]
The pack RFPThe RFP document itself, whatever the buyer chose to put in it. The ActAssociated tender documents (s.21). The term “invitation to tender” is industry usage — it is not in the Act. [2]
The route being run RFPWhatever the buyer designed, disclosed at whatever level of detail it chose. The ActA competitive tendering procedure (s.20) — either an open procedure or a competitive flexible procedure. There are only these two. [2]
The qualification stage RFPA vendor questionnaire, a security questionnaire, a DDQ — each buyer’s own. The ActConditions of participation (s.22), limited to legal and financial capacity and technical ability, and required to be proportionate. [6]
What you send back RFPA proposal. The ActA tender — and note the Act never defines the bare word, only derived terms like most advantageous tender (s.19(2)) and assessed tender (s.50(5)). [3]
Feedback afterwards RFPA debrief call, if the buyer offers one. Frequently nothing. The ActAn assessment summary (s.50), owed to every supplier that submitted an assessed tender, before the award notice is published. [4]
Early market conversations RFPAn RFI, or an informal supplier day. The ActPreliminary market engagement (s.16), with a preliminary market engagement notice (s.17) that must be published or explicitly explained away in the tender notice. [5]

Two of those rows are worth pausing on. Preliminary market engagement is section 16, not section 17 — s.17 is the notice section and s.18 is the duty to consider lots. And the Act carries no definition of the word “tender” on its own: its index of defined expressions at s.124 defines tender notice, associated tender document, competitive tendering procedure and condition of participation, and leaves the root word to do its ordinary work. [7]

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Now the part that makes the rest of it make sense — “RFP” is a real legal term. Somewhere else.

Where “RFP” really is a defined term

It is easy to read “the UK doesn’t use RFPs” as though the phrase were loose talk. It is not. It is a precisely defined instrument in the model law that a great deal of the world’s procurement legislation is built from — which is exactly why it travels, and why it keeps arriving in British inboxes.

The UNCITRAL Model Law on Public Procurement, adopted 1 July 2011, sets out at Article 27 a closed list of ten procurement methods. Three of them are requests for proposals. [1]

aOpen tendering
bRestricted tendering
cRequest for quotations
dRequest for proposals without negotiation
eTwo-stage tendering
fRequest for proposals with dialogue
gRequest for proposals with consecutive negotiations
hCompetitive negotiations
iElectronic reverse auction
jSingle-source procurement

They are not casual entries. Each has its own conditions for use — Article 29(3) for the first, Article 30(2) and 30(3) for the other two — its own solicitation rule at Article 35, headed “Solicitation in request-for-proposals proceedings”, and its own procedure articles at 47, 49 and 50. [1] [8]

And in national law

The United States defines it directly. FAR 15.203: “Requests for proposals (RFPs) are used in negotiated acquisitions to communicate Government requirements to prospective contractors and to solicit proposals” — and goes on to say what an RFP must describe: the requirement, the anticipated terms, what the proposal must contain, and the evaluation factors with their relative importance. [9]

The World Bank names it as a selection method under its 2016 Procurement Framework, used where the borrower specifies functional or performance needs and the market proposes solutions. Its price-led counterpart is Request for Bids — not “Invitation for Bids”, which is pre-2016 vocabulary that a good deal of published guidance has not caught up with. [10]

Canada lists it as one of seven solicitation types in official buyer guidance, alongside Invitation to Tender and Request for Quotation. [11] Australia is looser: AusTender treats a request for proposal as one flavour of “approach to market” rather than a defined method. [12]

Why this matters rather than being trivia
If you bid internationally, or to a multilateral, or to a US federal buyer, “RFP” is a load-bearing word with consequences attached. The mistake is assuming it carries the same weight when a British council uses it. It carries none.

The words that are not in the Procurement Act 2023

This is the claim the page turns on, so rather than asking you to take it on trust, here are the searches. They run on legislation.gov.uk, they are Crown copyright, and they take under a minute.

Start with the control, because a null result is only meaningful if the method is shown to work. Search the Act for a phrase that is definitely in it — “competitive flexible procedure” — and you get one result: the Procurement Act 2023. The search index is live and the scope is right. [13]

Now run the same query shape for the vocabulary everyone uses:

0 results“request for proposals”The phrase this page is about. It is not in the Act, and it is not in the Procurement Regulations 2024 either.
0 results“invitation to tender”The phrase most British bid teams would have guessed was the statutory one. It is industry usage.
0 results“request for quotation”No RFQ in the Act. The nearest statutory home is the below-threshold regime at Part 6.
0 results“pre-qualification questionnaire”And nor “prequalification”, “selection questionnaire” or “supplier questionnaire”.
0 resultsRFP · ITT · RFQ · PQQFour separate searches, four nulls. None of the acronyms appears anywhere in the Act.
3 results“tender notice”A second control, this one across the Act and its statutory instruments. The vocabulary that is statutory returns hits.

That is the whole argument, and it is checkable rather than assertable. [13]

The absence is not an oversight, and it is worth understanding why. The Act deliberately stopped prescribing the shape of the process. Under the previous regime the procedures were enumerated and a supplier could learn them once. The Act replaces that with one named procedure and one open one — and pushes the description of what the buyer is actually doing into the notice, per procurement. The vocabulary moved out of the statute and into the document you were sent.

The honest limit of this claim
Absence from the statute does not mean the words are meaningless or wrong to use. Live Cabinet Office guidance still refers to industry pre-qualification questionnaires, and buyers will keep titling packs “ITT” and “RFP” for as long as people have been doing so. The claim is narrower and sharper: none of these words creates or limits an obligation. The Act’s words do.

What the Act says instead

Two procedures. That is the whole menu, and it is much shorter than the one the vocabulary implies.

Section 20 is headed “Competitive tendering procedures”, and s.20(2) gives exactly two: an open procedure — a single-stage tendering procedure without a restriction on who can submit tenders — or such other competitive tendering procedure as the contracting authority considers appropriate, which the Act names a competitive flexible procedure. s.20(1) requires either to be carried out in accordance with a tender notice and any associated tender documents. [2]

The second one is doing enormous work. A competitive flexible procedure can have rounds, dialogue, negotiation, demonstrations, a selection stage, or none of those. It can look exactly like an RFP process, and frequently does. What it cannot do is be undisclosed: the shape has to be in the notice and the documents.

That is why “is this an RFP or a tender?” is the wrong question to put to a UK public pack, and “which procedure is this, and what does the notice say about how it runs?” is the right one. The answer to the second is written down. The answer to the first is a matter of the buyer’s taste in headings.

We take the award and evaluation half of this apart on RFP tender, and the statute itself on the Procurement Act 2023.

Open procedure
One stage. Anyone may tender. No selection round. If you meet the conditions of participation, you are in.
Competitive flexible procedure
Whatever the authority designs and publishes. This is where anything RFP-shaped lives — dialogue, negotiation, staged rounds, prototypes, presentations.
There is no third option
Direct award exists under separate provisions and is not a competitive tendering procedure. If someone describes a fourth route, ask which section.
The one thing to extract on day one
Which of the two is running, and whether there is a selection stage. Everything about how you resource the bid follows from that, and both are in the notice.

Every other pair: ITT, RFQ, RFI, RFT and the rest

“RFP vs tender” is one question in a family of them, and they all have the same answer in different clothes. Here is the family.

RFPRequest for proposalYou propose the method. Defined in the UNCITRAL Model Law and in US federal law; absent from UK statute. Run here as a competitive flexible procedure.
ITTInvitation to tenderThe pack. Universal British usage and not in the Act, which says “associated tender documents”. In an open procedure the tender notice effectively is the invitation.
RFTRequest for tenderThe same thing as an ITT, in Australian and Irish usage more than British. Like the others here it is nowhere in the Act’s s.124 index of defined expressions. If you receive one from a UK body, read it as an ITT.
RFQRequest for quotationPrice against a fixed specification, usually low value. A named method at Article 27(c) of the Model Law; absent from UK statute. In practice, below-threshold work — see below. Our page: RFP vs RFQ.
RFIRequest for informationNot a competition. Market research before one. Its statutory home is preliminary market engagement at s.16, with a notice duty at s.17. Answering one badly costs you later. Our page: RFI vs RFP.
SQ / PQQSelection or pre-qualification questionnaireThe suitability stage. The Standard Selection Questionnaire is gone for above-threshold work — core information now sits on the central digital platform’s Supplier Information Service, and suitability is handled as conditions of participation. Industry PQQs such as the Common Assessment Standard survive in works. [6] [14]
EOIExpression of interestA signal, not a bid. Common in framework and dynamic market contexts and in devolved Scottish practice. Not among the Act’s defined expressions.
Bid / proposalWhat you send backBoth are ordinary words for what the Act calls a tender. Nothing turns on which you say.

The pattern is unmistakable once the table is in front of you: every acronym in the industry’s working vocabulary is absent from the statute, and everything the statute names is absent from the industry’s vocabulary. They are two languages describing the same events, and only one of them creates obligations.

Which rulebook you are actually under

Before any of the above applies, there is a prior question most comparison pages never raise: the Procurement Act 2023 does not govern all UK public procurement, and the exception is large.

England: the Act, in full

Procurement Act 2023, in force for procurements commenced on or after 24 February 2025, with the Procurement Regulations 2024 underneath it. [3]

Scotland: mostly outside the Act

The Act says at s.126 that it extends to Scotland — which is not the same as applying there, and the distinction catches people out. Devolved Scottish authorities are on the excluded list at s.2(5)(a): the Scottish Government, health boards, local authorities, universities and colleges. They continue under the Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014 and the Scottish regulations. The Act reaches them only through joint or cross-border arrangements. [15] [16]

And Scotland has its own statutory portal

Public Contracts Scotland is not a convention — s.22 of the 2014 Act requires Scottish Ministers to maintain it, and s.23 requires awards to be publicised there. Above-threshold notices go to PCS and transmit onward to Find a Tender. [17]

Wales: inside the Act

Devolved Welsh authorities are not excluded. Wales has its own statutory instrument — the Procurement (Wales) Regulations 2024 — a Wales procurement policy statement under s.14, and a higher below-threshold notification figure, but it is the same Act. [18]

Northern Ireland: in above threshold, out below

Transferred Northern Ireland authorities are inside the Act above threshold but outside Part 6 by s.84(2)(b), so the below-threshold notice regime does not reach them — nor do pipeline notices or the s.70 payment publication duty. [19]

Find a Tender states the practical version of this on its own notice-types page: Act notices are required for procurements starting 24 February 2025 or later, “except if Scottish rules apply, if Northern Irish rules apply to a below-threshold contract”, or where the buyer is calling off a framework established under earlier legislation. [20]

Which is the second reason the label on the pack cannot be trusted: an “RFP” from a Scottish health board and an “RFP” from an English department are documents under two different statutes.

Below threshold, and the RFQ question

If the value is small, a lot of the above stops applying — and the figures everyone quotes for this have quietly stopped meaning what they used to.

A contract is a public contract, for the Act’s main purposes, where its estimated value including VAT reaches the Schedule 1 thresholds. For 1 January 2026 to 31 December 2027 those are £135,018 for central government goods and services and £207,720 for sub-central, with works at £5,193,000. [21]

Below that sits Part 6 and the notifiable below-threshold contract. Section 87(4) sets the figures: not less than £12,000 for a central government authority that is not a devolved Welsh authority, and not less than £30,000 for a devolved Welsh central government authority or any other contracting authority. Both are inclusive of VAT. [22]

These are no longer “the Contracts Finder thresholds”, and nearly every page in this niche still calls them that. Cabinet Office guidance is explicit that publishing a below-threshold tender notice and contract details notice on the central digital platform “replaces the requirement to publish a contract notice and contract award notice only on Contracts Finder”. Contracts Finder is now a legacy store for procurements that began before 24 February 2025. [22]

And there is one rule below threshold worth knowing even though it has nothing to do with vocabulary: section 85(1) forbids restricting who may tender by reference to an assessment of a supplier’s suitability. No PQQ stage, no selection round. If a below-threshold “RFQ” arrives with a suitability gate on the front, that is worth a clarification question. [23]

So is an RFQ a tender?
In ordinary usage it is the simplest form of one — fixed specification, price competition. In UK statute it is neither, because the phrase is not there. What determines your position is the contract’s value and whether it is notifiable.
Thresholds include VAT
Stated expressly in the Cabinet Office guidance and easy to get wrong by a fifth. A contract estimated ex-VAT near the line may be over it.
The figures move
Schedule 1 is amended on a two-year cycle to track the WTO Government Procurement Agreement. The current set runs to 31 December 2027; check the date before quoting any figure, including these.
Scotland runs different numbers
The Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014 has its own regulated-procurement threshold at £50,000 for goods and services, and it is not revised on the biennial cycle.

What changes for you in practice

Everything above resolves to a short list of things to do differently when a pack lands, whatever it calls itself.

How long have I got? TitleWhatever the covering email said, which is often not the deadline that binds. NoticeThe tendering period, set in the notice and subject to the Act’s minimums. This is the date that matters.
Is there a selection stage? Title“RFP” implies one stage; “ITT” implies two. Neither implication is reliable. NoticeOpen procedure means no selection stage. Competitive flexible means read the published shape.
Can the buyer negotiate with me? Title“Proposal” sounds negotiable and “tender” sounds fixed. Neither is a rule. NoticeOnly if the published procedure provides for it. If it does not, an offer to negotiate is a problem, not an opportunity.
What am I owed afterwards? TitleNothing follows from the title. NoticeIf this is a public contract under the Act: an assessment summary, a standstill period, and a published award notice. [4]
Where do I look for the next one? TitleThe buyer’s own portal, if you happen to know about it. NoticeFind a Tender for the Act’s notices, Public Contracts Scotland for devolved Scottish work. Publication is a duty. [17] [20]
The one habit worth building
When a pack arrives, find the notice before you open the document. It takes two minutes on Find a Tender, it tells you the procedure, the deadline and the award criteria, and it is the version of the truth that a challenge would be decided on. The pack is what the buyer wrote; the notice is what the buyer is bound by.
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Back to the surface — the questions, the glossary, and the record.
The sourced record

Questions people actually ask about RFP vs tender

These are real search strings from this page’s own query data, reproduced as typed.

what is the difference between a tender and an rfp
How much the buyer has already decided. An RFP is issued when the buyer knows the outcome it wants but not the method, and asks you to propose a solution — so what is being evaluated includes your approach. A tender is issued when the specification is already fixed, and asks you to bid on delivering it — so the bids are comparable and price carries more weight. In UK public procurement that remains a true description of intent, but it stops being what governs you: the procedure published in the tender notice sets your deadline, your entitlements and your right to challenge, whatever the document is called.
is rfp and tender the same
Not as concepts, and not as opposites either. In UK public work an RFP-titled pack is still run as one of the two competitive tendering procedures the Procurement Act 2023 allows — an open procedure or a competitive flexible procedure — so it is a tender process wearing a different word on the cover. Outside the public sector the distinction is real and useful, and nothing legal turns on it.
does "request for proposal" appear in the procurement act 2023?
No. A full-text search of the Act on legislation.gov.uk returns no results for "request for proposals", and also none for "invitation to tender", "request for quotation", "pre-qualification questionnaire", or the acronyms RFP, ITT, RFQ and PQQ. You can confirm the search itself works by running a control on a phrase that is in the Act — "competitive flexible procedure" returns one result. The Act’s vocabulary is tender notice, associated tender documents, competitive tendering procedure, conditions of participation and tender.
so where is "rfp" actually a legal term?
In the UNCITRAL Model Law on Public Procurement 2011, which lists ten procurement methods at Article 27 and makes three of them requests for proposals — without negotiation, with dialogue, and with consecutive negotiations — each with its own conditions for use and its own procedure article. It is also defined in US federal law at FAR 15.203, named as a selection method by the World Bank, and listed as a solicitation type in Canadian buyer guidance. It is a precise instrument in several jurisdictions. The UK is not one of them.
tender vs rfp — which one gets me better odds?
The label does not predict anything useful. What predicts your odds is the published award criteria and their relative importance, which the authority must set out under section 23, plus who holds the contract now — which is knowable, because contract award notices are published. A pack titled RFP with heavily weighted quality criteria and no incumbent is a much better prospect than one titled ITT where price dominates and the incumbent is bidding.
invitation to tender vs request for proposal
In British usage the ITT is the pack you respond to and the RFP is an imported term for a pack that asks you to design the solution. Neither phrase appears in the Procurement Act 2023 — the Act says "associated tender documents". In an open procedure the tender notice effectively is the invitation. Treat the two labels as interchangeable and read the procedure instead.
rfp vs rfq vs rfi
An RFI is not a competition at all — it is market research before one, and its statutory home in the UK is preliminary market engagement under section 16, with a notice duty at section 17. An RFQ asks for a price against a fixed specification, usually at low value. An RFP asks you to propose the method. Only the RFQ and RFP are procurement methods in the UNCITRAL sense, and none of the three acronyms appears in UK statute.
is there still a pqq or selection questionnaire?
Not as a standard document for above-threshold work. Cabinet Office guidance states that the Act does not prescribe how suppliers demonstrate they meet the conditions of participation, unlike the previous regulations which required the Single Procurement Document — in practice the Standard Selection Questionnaire. Core supplier information now sits on the central digital platform’s Supplier Information Service, and suitability is handled through conditions of participation under section 22. Industry pre-qualification questionnaires such as the Common Assessment Standard do survive in the works sector, and guidance expressly permits them.
does the procurement act 2023 apply in scotland?
Mostly not. The Act extends to Scotland, which is not the same as applying there — devolved Scottish authorities, including the Scottish Government, health boards, local authorities and universities, are on the excluded list at section 2(5)(a) and continue under the Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014 and the Scottish regulations. The Act reaches them only through joint or cross-border arrangements. Wales is inside the Act with its own statutory instrument; Northern Ireland is inside above threshold but outside the below-threshold regime in Part 6.
what are the tender thresholds in 2026?
For 1 January 2026 to 31 December 2027, and stated including VAT: £135,018 for central government goods and services, £207,720 for sub-central, and £5,193,000 for works. Below those, a contract may still be a notifiable below-threshold contract under section 87(4) at £12,000 for central government authorities that are not devolved Welsh, or £30,000 otherwise. Those figures are no longer Contracts Finder thresholds — the notice goes to the central digital platform, and Contracts Finder is now a legacy store for procurements that began before 24 February 2025.

The glossary

Which words bind, which words are habit, and where each one comes from.

StatutoryTender notice · associated tender documentSection 21, and both in the s.124 index of defined expressions. The instrument that actually governs the competition.
StatutoryOpen procedure · competitive flexible procedureSection 20. The only two competitive tendering procedures the Act provides.
StatutoryConditions of participationSection 22. Legal and financial capacity, or technical ability, and proportionate. The replacement for the selection questionnaire.
StatutoryMost advantageous tender · assessed tenders.19(2) and s.50(5). Note the Act defines these derived terms but never the bare word “tender”.
StatutoryPreliminary market engagementSection 16, with the notice duty at section 17. What industry calls an RFI. Section 18 is the duty to consider lots — a common mis-citation.
HabitRFP · ITT · RFT · RFQ · RFI · PQQ · EOIEvery one absent from the Act. Useful shorthand; creates no obligation and limits none.
Model lawRequest for proposals, three varietiesUNCITRAL Model Law 2011, Article 27(d), (f) and (g), with solicitation at Article 35 and procedures at Articles 47, 49 and 50.
RenamedGovernment Commercial AgencyCrown Commercial Service became the Government Commercial Agency on 1 April 2026. Notices published before that date still print the old name.

Sources

Every claim above resolves to one of these. All were fetched on 17 August 2026.

  1. UNCITRAL Model Law on Public Procurement (2011), official English text, United Nations Commission on International Trade Law. Adopted 1 July 2011, replacing the 1994 Model Law. Article 27 (Methods of procurement) quoted in full above; Chapter II runs Articles 27–35, with Article 35 headed “Solicitation in request-for-proposals proceedings”. Conditions for use at Articles 29(3), 30(2) and 30(3); procedures at Articles 47, 49 and 50.
  2. Procurement Act 2023, section 20 (Competitive tendering procedures), legislation.gov.uk. Section 21 (tender notices and associated tender documents) at /section/21.
  3. Procurement Act 2023 (c. 54), legislation.gov.uk. In force for procurements commenced on or after 24 February 2025. Section 19 (most advantageous tender) at /section/19.
  4. Procurement Act 2023, section 50 (Contract award notices and assessment summaries), legislation.gov.uk. s.50(3) requires an assessment summary to each supplier that submitted an assessed tender; s.50(5) defines “assessed tender”.
  5. Procurement Act 2023, section 16 (Preliminary market engagement), legislation.gov.uk. The notice duty is at section 17; section 18 is the duty to consider lots.
  6. Guidance: Conditions of Participation, Cabinet Office. Published 19 July 2024; last updated 6 August 2026. Paragraph 8 (the Act does not prescribe how suppliers demonstrate conditions of participation, unlike PCR reg. 59) and paragraph 36 (industry pre-qualification questionnaires such as the Common Assessment Standard) quoted.
  7. Procurement Act 2023, section 124 (Index of defined expressions), legislation.gov.uk. Consulted to confirm the Act defines “tender notice”, “associated tender document”, “competitive tendering procedure” and “condition of participation”, and carries no entry for the bare word “tender”, for “request for proposals” or for “invitation to tender”.
  8. Glossary of procurement-related terms used in the UNCITRAL Model Law on Public Procurement (2011), UNCITRAL. Entries 68, 69, 72 and 73. Used to corroborate the mapping of each request-for-proposals method to its conditions-for-use and procedure articles, independently of the Model Law text itself.
  9. FAR 15.203, Requests for proposals, Federal Acquisition Regulation (48 CFR 15.203), acquisition.gov. Part 15 is “Contracting by Negotiation”.
  10. Procurement Framework, World Bank, and the Bank’s Procurement Regulations for IPF Borrowers (July 2016, as amended). Request for Proposals is a named selection method; the price-led counterpart is Request for Bids (RFB). “Invitation for Bids” belongs to the pre-2016 Procurement Guidelines and is superseded.
  11. Types of bid solicitations, CanadaBuys, Public Services and Procurement Canada. Lists Invitation to Tender, Request for Information, Request for Proposal, Request for Quotation, Request for Standing Offers, Request for Supply Arrangement and Telephone-Buy.
  12. AusTender glossary, Australian Government Department of Finance. An approach to market “may include a request for tender, request for quote, request for expression of interest, request for information or request for proposal”. We cite AusTender only; we did not verify the text of the Commonwealth Procurement Rules themselves, which were not retrievable.
  13. legislation.gov.uk full-text search, “request for proposals”, scoped to the Procurement Act 2023. Returns “no results”. The same URL pattern with “competitive flexible procedure” returns one result — the control that shows the index is live and the scope correct. The searches for “invitation to tender”, “request for quotation”, “pre-qualification questionnaire”, RFP, ITT, RFQ and PQQ were run the same way and each returned no results, as were the equivalents scoped to the Procurement Regulations 2024 (SI 2024/692).
  14. The Official Procurement Act 2023 e-learning, Module 6: Supplier selection, Cabinet Office. Records that above-threshold supplier information “will no longer be captured using the Standard Selection Questionnaire (SQ)” and moves to the Supplier Information Service on the central digital platform.
  15. Procurement Act 2023, section 126 (Extent) and section 2 (Contracting authorities), legislation.gov.uk. s.126 provides that the Act extends to England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland; s.2(5)(a) places devolved Scottish authorities on the list of excluded authorities.
  16. Public procurement: cross-border co-operation within the UK (SPPN 5/2026), Scottish Government. States that devolved Scottish contracting authorities remain subject to the pre-existing rules and to the Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014, and names the bodies concerned.
  17. Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014, section 22, legislation.gov.uk. Requires Scottish Ministers to establish and maintain the Public Contracts website; section 23(2) requires awards under a regulated procurement to be publicised there.
  18. Guidance: Below-Threshold Contracts, Cabinet Office. Published 8 July 2024; last updated 13 July 2026. Paragraph 9 (no exemption for Welsh devolved authorities from publishing below-threshold notices) and paragraphs 11–12 (central digital platform publication replaces the Contracts Finder requirement, and must come first) quoted. The Welsh instrument is the Procurement (Wales) Regulations 2024 (SI 2024/782, W.121).
  19. Procurement Act 2023, section 84, legislation.gov.uk. s.84(2)(b) disapplies Part 6 in relation to procurement by a transferred Northern Ireland authority other than under a reserved or devolved Welsh procurement arrangement.
  20. Notice types and sequences, Find a Tender. Sets out which notices are required from 24 February 2025 and the exceptions for Scottish rules and for Northern Irish below-threshold contracts. The preliminary market engagement notice is the UK2 notice.
  21. PPN 023: 2026 Threshold Amounts, Cabinet Office, published 27 November 2025, in force 1 January 2026; Procurement Act 2023, Schedule 1 as amended by SI 2025/1200; and Guidance: Thresholds, Cabinet Office, which states the amounts are inclusive of VAT and cover 1 January 2026 to 31 December 2027. All three cross-checked and identical.
  22. Procurement Act 2023, section 87, legislation.gov.uk, for the £12,000 and £30,000 notifiable below-threshold figures at s.87(4); and Guidance: Below-Threshold Contracts paragraphs 10, 11, 12 and 23 for their VAT-inclusive status and for the replacement of the Contracts Finder requirement.
  23. Procurement Act 2023, section 85, legislation.gov.uk. s.85(1) prohibits restricting the submission of tenders for a regulated below-threshold contract by reference to an assessment of a supplier’s suitability.

Corrections and limits

Three things this page had wrong in draft and corrected against source, recorded because the same errors are easy to repeat. Preliminary market engagement is section 16, not section 17 — s.17 is the notice section and s.18 is the duty to consider lots. UNCITRAL Chapter II runs Articles 27–35, not 27–31, and the request-for-proposals procedures sit outside Chapter II entirely at Articles 47, 49 and 50; Article 31 is electronic reverse auctions. The World Bank’s price-led method is Request for Bids, not Invitation for Bids — the latter is pre-2016 vocabulary.

Two limits stated rather than hidden. We cite AusTender for the Australian position and did not verify the Commonwealth Procurement Rules themselves, which we could not retrieve; the claim is therefore about what AusTender lists, not about what the CPRs say. And we make no claim about Sell2Wales’ statutory status: Public Contracts Scotland has an express statutory basis in the 2014 Act, and we found no equivalent provision for Sell2Wales, so we say nothing rather than assuming symmetry. We also do not publish a works threshold for the Scottish regime, because the only figure we found for it came from law-firm commentary rather than from the Act.

Nothing on this page is legal advice. Where a decision turns on any of it, read the notice and the tender documents for your own procurement — they are the instrument that binds, which is the point the page has been making throughout.