How to respond to a UK public sector tender with AI under the Procurement Act 2023

What changed under the Procurement Act 2023

The Procurement Act 2023 came into force on 24 February 2025 and replaced the previous public procurement regulations for new procurements. For suppliers, a few changes matter most. Contracts are awarded to the most advantageous tender, which the Act defines as the tender that meets the authority's requirements and best satisfies the award criteria. GOV.UK's guidance says the rename from most economically advantageous tender is not a change in policy: price, quality and wider social, economic and environmental benefits can all count, provided they relate to the contract and are proportionate.

There is a new competitive flexible procedure, which lets authorities design stages such as negotiation or demonstrations. Suppliers register once on the Central Digital Platform, through Find a Tender, and reuse their core information across bids. Authorities must give assessment summaries for final tenders, and prompt payment rules extend 30-day payment terms across more of the supply chain.

Before you write: register and decide

Register on the Central Digital Platform when you intend to bid, and keep your core supplier information current: it is reused across bids, so an out-of-date entry costs you every time. Then make the bid decision honestly. Can you deliver at the scale described? Do you have case studies that match? Can you answer each question with substance inside its word limit?

Ask Draimo for a one-page summary of the tender: the scope, the contract term and value, the mandatory requirements, the award criteria with their weightings, and the deadlines, including the clarification deadline. The decision then rests on the documents, not the title.

Build the compliance matrix

A compliance matrix lists every requirement in the tender pack, where it comes from, how it is scored and where your response answers it. Evaluators score against the tender's own words, so a missed requirement scores nothing, however good the rest is.

Attach the tender documents and ask Draimo for every requirement with its source: the specification paragraph, the question number, the weighting and the word limit. Then ask the question experienced bid writers always ask: which award criteria does the scoring guidance reward that no question asks for directly? Read the matrix against the documents yourself; it is only as good as its last check.

Answer to the scoring, not the specification

Most tenders publish scoring guidance, often a scale from unacceptable to excellent, with a description of what earns each score. Write to the top band. A strong answer shows you understood the requirement, says specifically how you will meet it, and proves you can, with a method, named roles, timescales and a relevant example with a measurable result.

Use the question's own structure as your headings, so the evaluator finds each element where they expect it. Ask Draimo to draft each answer from your method notes and the matching matrix rows, inside the word limit, then ask it to list every claim that has no evidence behind it.

Social value, and the price schedule

Where social value is an award criterion, treat it like any scored question: specific, measurable commitments that relate to the contract, such as apprenticeships, local supply chain spend or emissions reductions, each with how you will report it. Generic statements score poorly.

Your price schedule must match the authority's template exactly. When you build pricing tables in a Draimo document, percentage lines and totals are recomputed, so the arithmetic in the submitted file reconciles. The rates themselves are your commercial decision.

How to do it with Draimo

Draimo's gallery shows the shape of a finished bid: a City of Tshwane tender for solar backup at 12 clinics, a Swedish municipal cleaning tender written in Swedish, and a US federal RFP response. Each page shows the prompt that produced it.

1. Create a project for the bid and attach the tender pack and any clarifications.
2. Ask for the one-page summary and the compliance matrix, and check the matrix against the documents.
3. Make the bid decision.
4. Draft each answer against its scoring guidance and word limit, from your own method notes and case studies.
5. Edit in plain words: "cut Q3 to 1,000 words", "add the KPIs from our current contract".
6. Ask for a final pass that checks every matrix row has an answer, then download and submit before the deadline.

What it costs

Reading files works on every plan. Writing the bid as a document is part of Draimo Pro, £20.99 a month in the UK or £224.99 a year, with a 7-day trial on the monthly plan. Each document shows its credit estimate before it starts, and a failed document's held credits are released.

Sources we checked

• Procurement Act 2023, section 19 (legislation.gov.uk)
• GOV.UK: The Procurement Act 2023, a short guide for suppliers
• GOV.UK: Assessing competitive tenders

Checked October 21, 2026. Dates and amounts change every year. Ask Draimo for this year's figures, grounded in official sources.