The Procurement Act 2023 came into force on 24 February 2025. Existing procurements could remain subject to the previous rules, so the first practical question was which regime applied to the opportunity being priced.
For an estimating team, a sensible response was to review the tender record. The price should be traceable to the published requirements, subsequent clarifications and the commitments made in the submission.
This is more demanding than keeping the final workbook. A clarification may change the delivery period, a specification or the allocation of responsibility. If that change is captured only in someone’s inbox, the final price can become detached from the scope the bidder has offered.
- Published requirements
- Clarification record
- Scope and price basis
- Approval to submit
- Submission retained
An estimating-team workflow, not a complete description of the Procurement Act or legal advice.
Make changes visible before submission
Maintain a register of tender amendments and identify the estimate sections affected. Record who checked each change and whether the price, programme or qualifications were revised.
The commercial and procurement specialists should interpret the applicable rules. The estimator should provide a consistent, reviewable account of the scope and pricing decisions that support the bid.
That also helps after award. The delivery team needs to know which assumptions were accepted, which remained qualifications and which were replaced during clarification. Reconstructing those decisions from a folder of differently named spreadsheets is avoidable work.
The reform did not make a weak estimating process strong by itself. It gave teams a timely reason to check whether their existing records could withstand a careful review.