Most contractors who miss out on a public construction framework do not lose because they cannot do the work. They lose at the pre-qualification stage, because a certificate had lapsed, a case study was too thin, a policy was undated, or the person who knew where the accident statistics lived was on site the week the questionnaire was due. A framework PQQ is largely a test of whether you can produce the right evidence, in the right form, on time.
This guide is a checklist. It sets out the documents and evidence a contractor should have ready before a framework pre-qualification deadline, grouped the way questionnaires tend to group them. It also explains what evaluators usually look for in each section, where contractors commonly trip up, and how to keep the material current so the next PQQ starts from a full folder rather than an empty one.
One caveat before the list. Every framework sets its own questions, thresholds and pass marks. The buyer's documents always take priority over any general checklist, including this one. Read the selection questionnaire, the instructions and any clarifications in full, then use this list to make sure nothing obvious is missing.
Why Framework PQQs Deserve Their Own Checklist
A one-off construction tender asks whether you can deliver one project. A framework asks whether a buyer should be able to call on you repeatedly, often across a range of projects, sites and values, for the life of the agreement. That changes the tone of the questions. Evaluators want to see that your systems are established, that your financial position can support the work, and that your health and safety, quality and environmental management hold up across more than one job.
It also changes the stakes. Getting onto a framework can open a route to work that would otherwise never be advertised to you as an open competition. Missing out can mean waiting until the framework is re-procured. That is a strong reason to prepare well in advance rather than reacting once the notice appears.
Practical rule: most of what a framework PQQ asks for already exists somewhere in your business. The work is finding the current version, checking it is still true, and presenting it in the form the buyer asked for.
If you are newer to the format, our guides to what a PQQ is, what a framework agreement is and PQQs in construction cover the background. This page assumes you know what you are bidding for and want to know what to gather.
Before You Start: Read the Pack Properly
A checklist is only useful once you know what this particular buyer wants. Before gathering anything, spend time with the documents and pull out the following:
- The deadline and submission route: the date, the time, the portal, and any separate deadline for clarification questions.
- The lot structure: which lots exist, which ones you intend to apply for, and whether the evidence requirements differ between them. Value bands and geographic lots often carry different financial and experience thresholds.
- Pass or fail questions: mandatory requirements where a single shortfall removes you from the process, regardless of how well you score elsewhere.
- Scored questions: the weighting, the word or character limits, and the scoring guidance for each.
- Required attachments: what must be uploaded, in what format, and with what naming.
- Thresholds: minimum turnover, insurance levels, accreditation requirements and any experience criteria such as a number of comparable projects within a period.
Write these into a single tracker. A simple spreadsheet with one row per question, the owner, the evidence needed and its status is enough. The point is that nobody discovers a missing mandatory document the evening before submission.
If a requirement is unclear, ask through the clarification route. Buyers usually publish clarification responses to all bidders, and those responses can change what you need to provide. Someone should own the job of checking them.
Section One: Organisation and Company Information
This is the least glamorous section and the one most often answered in a hurry. It is also where small inconsistencies make an evaluator wonder how carefully the rest was prepared.
What to gather
- Registered company name, number and registered address, exactly as recorded at Companies House.
- Trading names, if different, and any parent or group company details.
- VAT registration number.
- Details of directors and, where asked, persons with significant control.
- Company type and, where relevant, whether you meet the buyer's definition of an SME.
- Contact details for the bid, including a named person who can answer clarification questions.
- Details of any consortium members or key subcontractors you intend to rely on, if the questionnaire allows that.
Where contractors trip up
The registered name on the questionnaire does not match Companies House. A director listed has resigned. The trading address differs from the registered office without explanation. None of these are fatal on their own, but they create clarification questions and erode confidence. Check each item against the source record rather than copying it from the last PQQ.
Section Two: Exclusion Grounds and Declarations
Most selection questionnaires include declarations about mandatory and discretionary exclusion grounds: matters such as certain convictions, insolvency, breaches of tax or social security obligations, professional misconduct and previous poor performance on public contracts. The precise wording depends on the procurement rules the buyer is working under. Our guide to the Procurement Act 2023 covers the wider picture.
What to gather
- Confirmation from directors that they can make the required declarations accurately.
- A record of any matter that may need to be declared, with the facts and dates.
- Evidence of any remedial or self-cleaning steps you have taken, if a matter does need declaring.
Where contractors trip up
Treating declarations as boilerplate. These are statements a director is signing up to, and they should be read and confirmed by someone who knows the answer, every time. If there is something to declare, it is usually better to set out the facts and the steps taken clearly than to hope it does not come up. This is a judgement call for senior people and, where needed, your advisers. It is not something to automate.
Section Three: Economic and Financial Standing
Framework buyers want reassurance that you will still be trading and able to resource work over the life of the agreement. Financial questions are often pass or fail, or assessed against thresholds tied to the value of the lot.
What to gather
- Your most recent filed accounts, and usually the years before that as the questionnaire specifies.
- Management accounts for the current period if your latest filed accounts are old or the buyer allows them.
- Turnover figures broken down in the way the questionnaire asks, for example total turnover and turnover in the relevant sector.
- Any parent company guarantee, if you intend to rely on group financial standing and the buyer accepts it.
- A short explanation of anything in the accounts that might be read the wrong way, such as a one-off loss or an unusual year.
- Bank details or references, if requested.
Where contractors trip up
Applying for a lot whose turnover threshold you do not meet. Read the financial criteria lot by lot before deciding which lots to pursue. If you fall short, a smaller lot may be the realistic route. Our bid/no-bid analysis guide covers how to make that call deliberately.
The other common error is supplying figures that do not reconcile with the accounts. If the questionnaire asks for turnover for a specific period, make sure the number matches a document the evaluator can check.
Section Four: Insurance
Insurance is usually stated as minimum levels of cover, and you either have them or you confirm you will obtain them before contract award. The levels vary by framework and by lot.
What to gather
- Current certificates for employer's liability insurance.
- Current certificates for public liability insurance.
- Professional indemnity insurance, if you carry design responsibility or the framework asks for it.
- Contractors' all risks or other cover the questionnaire names.
- Renewal dates for each policy, so you know whether any will lapse during the evaluation period.
- A letter from your broker confirming you could increase cover to the required level, if the buyer allows a commitment to obtain cover rather than evidence of existing cover.
Where contractors trip up
Uploading a certificate that has expired, or will expire before award, without saying how renewal is in hand. Check the dates on every certificate before it goes in. Our guide to insurance requirements covers the common types and how buyers set levels.
Section Five: Health and Safety
In construction, health and safety is often the most scrutinised part of pre-qualification. Evaluators are looking for a working system, not a well-written policy.
What to gather
- Your health and safety policy, signed and dated by a director, with a review date.
- Your organisation and arrangements for managing health and safety: who is responsible for what.
- Details of your competent health and safety advice, whether in-house or external, with relevant qualifications.
- Any third-party health and safety accreditation or pre-qualification scheme membership you hold, with certificate and expiry date.
- Accident and incident records for the period the questionnaire asks about, including RIDDOR reportable incidents, and how you calculate any rate requested.
- Details of any enforcement action, improvement or prohibition notices, and how they were resolved.
- Your approach to risk assessments and method statements, with an example if requested.
- Training records and the qualifications of site management and operatives, such as relevant site safety and supervisor qualifications and card scheme status.
- Your arrangements for CDM duties, including whether you act as principal contractor and how you meet those duties.
- How you select, monitor and manage subcontractors on health and safety.
- Evidence of site inspections, audits and how findings are closed out.
Where contractors trip up
The policy is fine but there is no evidence it is lived. Evaluators often ask for examples: an audit report, a toolbox talk record, an incident investigation with the actions taken. If those exist, have redacted versions ready. If they do not, that is a gap in the system, not just in the bid.
Accident figures are another common problem. Make sure the numbers are drawn from your records, cover the period asked for, and are presented in the format requested. Do not estimate. Our guide to health and safety compliance has more on the underlying requirements, and how to write a method statement covers that document in detail.
Section Six: Quality Management
What to gather
- Your quality policy, signed and dated.
- Certification to a recognised quality management standard, if you hold one, with the certificate, scope and expiry date. Our ISO certification guide explains the common standards.
- If you are not certified, a description of your quality system: how you plan, check, record and correct work.
- Examples of inspection and test plans, snagging and handover procedures.
- How you manage defects and record lessons learned.
- How you manage quality across your supply chain.
Where contractors trip up
Certificate scope. A certificate that covers one part of the business, or one site, may not cover the work the framework is for. Check that the scope wording matches what you are bidding for.
Section Seven: Environmental Management and Sustainability
What to gather
- Your environmental policy, signed and dated.
- Certification to a recognised environmental management standard, if held, with scope and expiry.
- Your approach to site waste management, including any waste carrier registration where relevant.
- How you manage pollution prevention, materials, energy and water on site.
- A carbon reduction plan, if the buyer asks for one, and any carbon reporting you already do.
- Details of any environmental incidents or enforcement and how they were resolved.
Where contractors trip up
Making commitments in this section that nobody has agreed. Targets and dates in a carbon reduction plan are commitments. They should be signed off by someone with authority, not drafted to sound ambitious. Our guide to environmental compliance covers the basics.
Section Eight: Technical and Professional Ability
This is usually the scored heart of a framework PQQ. It is where you show that you have done comparable work, have the people to do more of it, and manage it well.
Case studies and references
- A set of case studies for projects comparable to the framework lot in type, value and complexity.
- For each: client, location, contract value, dates, your role, form of contract, scope, challenges, how you handled them and evidenced outcomes.
- Referee names and contact details, with the referee's agreement to be contacted.
- Any completion certificates, client feedback or performance scores you are permitted to share.
Choose case studies that match the lot. Your most recent project is not always your most relevant one. A refurbishment for a private client may be weaker evidence for a public education framework than an older school extension. Our guides to writing case studies and presenting them go into the detail, and customer reference management covers keeping referees warm.
Practical rule: never put a referee forward who has not agreed to be contacted for this bid. A referee who is surprised by the call is a weak reference.
People and resources
- An organisation chart showing management structure and the roles relevant to framework delivery.
- CVs for key people: directors, contracts managers, site managers, health and safety lead, quality lead.
- Qualifications, professional memberships and relevant training for those people.
- Directly employed headcount by trade or role, if asked.
- Details of plant and equipment you own or have access to, if relevant.
- How you would resource multiple concurrent call-offs.
Supply chain management
- How you select, pre-qualify and monitor subcontractors and suppliers.
- Your payment practices and terms with the supply chain, if asked.
- Examples of long-standing subcontractor relationships, described factually.
See our guide to subcontractor management for more.
Management systems and methods
- Your approach to programme management and reporting.
- Your approach to cost control and change management.
- Your approach to mobilisation for a new call-off.
- How you engage with clients, occupiers and neighbours on live sites.
- Any digital or BIM capability the framework asks about, described as it actually is.
Section Nine: Policies and Compliance
Questionnaires commonly ask for a set of policies. Have each one current, signed, dated, and with a review date that has not passed.
- Equality, diversity and inclusion policy.
- Modern slavery statement or policy, depending on your size and the buyer's requirement.
- Anti-bribery and anti-corruption policy.
- Safeguarding policy, particularly for frameworks covering schools, healthcare or occupied housing.
- Data protection and information security policy.
- Whistleblowing policy.
- Complaints procedure.
- Business continuity plan.
- Prompt payment policy, if asked.
Cyber security
Some buyers ask for Cyber Essentials or an equivalent as a requirement. If the framework needs it and you do not hold it, find out early. It is not something to discover in the last week. Our guide to Cyber Essentials certification explains it.
Where contractors trip up
Policies with review dates two years in the past, or signed by a director who has left. Evaluators notice. A short annual review cycle, owned by one person, avoids most of this. Our guide to certification tracking covers keeping dates under control.
Section Ten: Social Value
Social value questions are increasingly common in construction frameworks, sometimes at pre-qualification and more often at the call-off stage. Even if this PQQ does not score it heavily, buyers may ask about your track record.
What to gather
- A factual record of social value you have already delivered: local employment, apprenticeships, work placements, local supply chain spend, community activity.
- How you measure and report it.
- Any commitments you are prepared to make, agreed in advance by someone who can authorise them.
Generic statements score poorly. Invented ones create obligations. Use what you have actually done and what you can actually commit to. Our guide to social value tender questions covers this in more depth.
The Checklist in One Table
| Section | Core evidence | Check before submitting |
|---|---|---|
| Organisation | Company details, directors, VAT, group structure | Matches Companies House exactly |
| Declarations | Exclusion grounds confirmations | Read and confirmed by a director |
| Financial | Accounts, turnover, guarantees if relevant | Meets the threshold for each lot applied for |
| Insurance | Certificates for each required cover | Levels and expiry dates |
| Health and safety | Policy, arrangements, accreditation, accident records, CDM, training | Figures from records, examples ready |
| Quality | Policy, certification or system description | Certificate scope covers the work |
| Environmental | Policy, certification, waste, carbon plan if asked | Commitments signed off |
| Technical ability | Case studies, referees, CVs, org chart, supply chain | Relevance to lot, referee consent |
| Policies | EDI, modern slavery, anti-bribery, safeguarding, data, continuity | Signed, dated, in review |
| Social value | Delivered record, measurement, agreed commitments | Nothing promised that nobody agreed |
Building a Timeline Back From the Deadline
Every framework sets its own timetable, so there is no standard schedule. What works is planning backwards from the deadline. Put the upload, with time to spare, at the end. Before that, a full read-through by one reviewer. Before that, director sign-off on declarations, financial figures and any commitments. Before that, drafting. Before that, evidence gathering, which is where the longest lead times sit.
Anything that depends on a third party belongs at the front of the plan: referee consent, broker letters, accreditation renewals, accountant input on figures. These take as long as they take, and none of them speed up because your deadline is close.
Leave the final period for the portal. Uploads fail, file size limits catch people out, and formatting rules are sometimes stricter than expected. Submitting early is not a sign of over-caution. It is the only way to recover from a technical problem.
Drafting the Scored Answers
Once the evidence is in place, the scored questions become much easier. A good answer to a framework PQQ question tends to do the same few things:
- Answers the question asked: follow the buyer's sub-questions in order, using their language.
- Describes a real process: who does what, when, and how it is recorded.
- Proves it: a named example, a project, a document, a figure from your records.
- Fits the weighting: more depth where more marks are available.
- Stays within limits: word and character limits are enforced, and text beyond them may not be read.
Most of these questions have been asked of you before in slightly different words. Health and safety, quality, environmental management, supply chain, equality and complaints come up again and again. Rewriting them from scratch every time adds risk rather than quality, because each rewrite is a fresh chance to introduce an error or drop a piece of evidence that scored well last time.
This is where Bidwell helps. It reads the bids, policies, case studies, accreditations and CVs you already have, and builds a knowledge base of your own answers, organised by the questions tenders actually ask. That part is free and stays free. When a new PQQ arrives, you drop it in and Bidwell drafts every question from that knowledge base, in your words, citing the document each answer came from. Construction is the sector we see most, because method statements, quality plans and health and safety policies get asked for again and again. Your job becomes reviewing and tailoring, not writing from a blank page. The PQQ use case and construction page show how that works.
What it will not do is fill a gap you have no evidence for. If your knowledge base contains nothing on a subject, there is nothing to draft from, and that tells you where the real work in this PQQ lies.
Practical rule: if an answer cannot tell you which document it came from, you have to verify it from scratch, and you have saved nothing.
Reviewing Before You Submit
Review is where PQQs are won or lost on detail. A reviewer should check each answer against the scoring guidance and ask whether it addresses every part of the question with evidence rather than assertion. They should also check every factual item: names, dates, figures, certificate numbers, referees, and any commitment.
Read the whole submission end to end at least once. Sections drafted separately can contradict each other: a different contracts manager named in two answers, a different headcount in the organisation section and the resources section. A single reader catches these.
Finally, confirm that every required attachment is present, named as instructed and opens correctly. Bidwell drafts, but you review and approve every word, and a human always signs the bid before it goes out. Our bid review checklist sets out a structure you can adapt.
Keeping the Folder Ready for Next Time
The best time to prepare for a framework PQQ is before the notice is published. A contractor with a current evidence set can respond to a framework in a fraction of the effort of one starting from scratch, and can afford to look at opportunities it would otherwise skip.
- Keep one master set of evidence. One current version of each policy, certificate and case study, in one place.
- Give each item an owner and a review date. Insurance renewals, accreditation expiries and policy reviews should not depend on someone remembering.
- Write case studies as projects finish. The details are fresh, the client is happy, and the referee is easy to ask.
- Record accident and performance data as you go. Reconstructing it under deadline is where errors creep in.
- Feed successful answers back in. When a PQQ scores well, keep those answers as the starting point for the next. In Bidwell, winning responses go back into your knowledge base, so each bid is quicker than the last.
- Read the feedback. Score breakdowns and debriefs show where evidence was thin. Our guide to debriefing meetings covers getting value from them.
If you are unsure whether you are ready for framework work at all, Bidwell's free tender readiness checker points at the two or three things holding you back, and the framework eligibility tool suggests which UK public sector frameworks you can realistically apply to, with the documents you would need to gather.
Bidwell turns your past bids, policies, case studies and accreditations into a knowledge base of your own answers, then drafts new PQQs and tenders from it, citing the source document for every answer so you can check it before you submit. Building the knowledge base is free, with no card and no time limit. Visit Bidwell to see how it fits your next framework submission.
