What is the central digital platform?
The system behind Act-regime publication: an enhanced Find a Tender service at find-tender.service.gov.uk plus a supplier information service, reached through a single registration and account. Notices are published on the platform before appearing elsewhere; core supplier information (the standard company, financial, and compliance particulars) is confirmed once and reused, with timing rules per procurement type including call-offs. Publication duties sit in Regulation 5; the alternative procedure and urgency exceptions have their own short clocks; confirm the current guidance text before relying on any hour count here.
Where does Contracts Finder fit?
As the legacy and below-threshold route whose exact current status varies by notice; confirm per tender whether the notice you are reading lives there, on the central platform, or both. Treating either board as the whole market misses work; treating them as interchangeable misreads regime. The notice’s own publication route is part of the regime evidence, alongside date and buyer nation.
What about devolved nations?
Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland run their own boards (Public Contracts Scotland, Sell2Wales, eTendersNI) with their own registration and alert mechanics. Nation-specific routing is on Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Register where the work is, not where the headquarters sits.
The registration workflow
- Register once. Supplier account on the central platform; core information complete and current.
- Alerts per interest. Categories and regions matched to the firm’s strategy; alerts are inbound to be gated, not a pipeline.
- Confirm per notice. Publication route, regime, and buyer nation from the notice itself before the gate.
- Frameworks separately. Entry routes for frameworks and dynamic markets live with the arrangement; see frameworks and dynamic markets.
What does this mean for the bid/no-bid call?
A notice found is not a notice qualified: log the publication route, confirm the regime, then run the gate. Stale supplier information (accounts, certifications, contact details) fails participation evidence that has nothing to do with quality. Current records are a capacity fact.