Preliminary Market Engagement

What is a preliminary market engagement?

This guidance explains how public bodies can talk to the market before they formally invite tenders under the Procurement Act 2023. Preliminary market engagement is simply the early conversation you and your commercial colleagues have with potential suppliers to test ideas, check what the market can deliver and refine your brief. The Act now lets you publish a short online advert, called a preliminary market engagement notice, to invite those conversations or to tell other suppliers that they have already taken place. Doing so keeps the process open and avoids any suggestion that one firm has had a quiet head start.

How might a preliminary market engagement be useful for buying planning software?

For planning teams looking at new software or data services, this step is invaluable. By sounding out vendors you can explore whether off-the-shelf products will meet your needs, what integration work might be involved and where costs really sit across the system’s life. The guidance stresses that all suppliers must have equal access to the same information, that you should keep good notes of what is shared and that any timetable you set must give small and medium-sized firms a fair chance to respond. If a supplier gains an advantage that cannot be removed, they must be excluded from the later competition, so careful recordkeeping is essential.

Carrying out a preliminary market engagement

In practice you will shape the engagement with your procurement or corporate services team. They will draft and post the notice on the central platform and advise on issues such as conflicts of interest. Your role is to frame the service requirements, attend workshops or webinars with suppliers and feed the insights back into the specification. Even if you decide not to publish a notice you will still need to explain why when the tender goes live, so the safest approach is usually to issue one. Used well, preliminary market engagement helps you design a realistic, value for money brief and encourages a wider range of tech firms to bid for your planning projects.