The North East of England is to benefit from new public sector business opportunities in the construction industry as leading e-tender service provider Millstream Associates attends local event.
Millstream Associates will be showcasing their flagship product Tenders Direct, at Constructionline’s North East Meet the Buyer event in Sedgefield, on Thursday 10th September 2015.
The construction industry accounts for 6.1% of the total economic output in the UK, worth £103bn and resulting in 2.10million jobs in 2014. The industry has experienced fluctuations in growth since the recession, but from 2013 onwards there have been positive signs of growth. Private sector orders have increased and in Q1 of this year they were worth £15.3billion, with public sector orders worth £5.4billion and private sector infrastructure orders totalling £2.5bn.[
More than 4,000 private sector companies use Tenders Direct to find new business opportunities, of those over 950 are construction businesses, accounting for 22% of the customer base.
In the last 12 months Tenders Direct has seen a 14% increase in public sector construction tenders in the UK and Ireland, with the number of available contracts rising to over 15,300. From January to July this year there has already been over 9,000 available construction contracts and these look set to steadily rise over the year.
Tenders Direct has noted a significant increase in renewable energy tenders, including solar panels, geothermal/heat pumps, biomass heating, combined heat and gas and energy efficiency consultancy, around 35% more. There has also been a 25% increase in Architecture and Design team opportunities and an 8% increase in new build tenders, reflecting the governments Construction 2025 strategy and plans for growth in these areas of the construction sector.
Tenders Direct managing director Tim Williams added; “Construction is a major source of tenders in the UK and Ireland, with the government reducing regulations and reforming the procurement of construction projects, this has reduced costs and opened further opportunities for small and medium sized companies.
Around 70% of the construction tenders published 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)
These smaller, but still valuable, contracts are particularly attractive to smaller companies as there is much less competition from major contractors or overseas companies.
Buyers are also being encouraged to break contracts down into smaller lots – which should make a huge difference for small companies in the construction sector.”
“By attending this Meet the Buyer event we hope to be able to help companies in the North East, who are interested in supplying tenders to the public sector and inform them on how to find the right type and size contracts to increase their chances of winning tenders.”
The Tenders Direct service provides private companies with comprehensive information on new business opportunities from the public sector. As well as helping to match companies with available tenders, the team will educate attendees to the event on the complexities of tender sourcing.
Tenders Direct work with thousands of public sector organisations in the UK, Ireland and Norway to publicise their contracts, allowing direct access to contracts that many are unaware of. The dedicated research team solely identify contracts and include them within the Tenders Direct database – many of these are smaller contracts that would not be published by the Official Journal (OJEU) or on any other central resource.
The Tenders Direct team, also manually categorise all tenders to ensure that only highly relevant opportunities are provided and therefore personalised to individual preferences and areas of specialism are sent to subscribers every day.
