PQQ in Procurement: What It Is and What Buyers Are Checking

In procurement, a PQQ is a pre-qualification questionnaire: a structured set of questions a buyer uses to check suppliers before inviting them to tender, or before admitting them to a framework. It is the buyer's filter. Suppliers who pass go forward. Suppliers who do not are removed before anyone reads a full proposal or a price.

Most explanations stop there. This guide goes a step further and looks at the PQQ from the buyer's side of the table. Every section of a pre-qualification questionnaire exists because the buyer is trying to manage a specific risk, and once you see what that risk is, it becomes much clearer what evidence you need and how to present it. The guide is written for suppliers who are new to public sector and larger private sector work, and for owners who want to know what to gather before they think about tools, templates or software.

The short version is this: a buyer reading your PQQ is asking whether you are a legitimate business, whether you are safe to contract with, whether you can afford to do the work, whether your systems hold up, and whether you have done this kind of thing before. Everything else is detail.

Where the PQQ Sits in Procurement

Procurement is the whole process a buyer goes through to buy goods, works or services: identifying a need, deciding how to buy, finding suppliers, selecting them, awarding a contract and managing it afterwards. Tendering is one part of that. Our guide to the difference between procurement and tendering sets out how the two relate, and the stages of the procurement process covers the full sequence.

The PQQ belongs to the selection part of that process. In a common two-stage approach it looks like this:

1. The buyer publishes a notice on a portal such as Find a Tender, Contracts Finder, Public Contracts Scotland, Sell2Wales or eTendersNI.
2. Suppliers register interest and download the documents.
3. Suppliers complete and submit the PQQ.
4. The buyer checks pass or fail requirements and scores the scored questions.
5. A shortlist is invited to tender.
6. The shortlist submits full tenders, which are evaluated, and the contract is awarded.

Not every procurement works like this. In some procedures the selection questions and the tender questions arrive together in one pack. Frameworks often lean heavily on the selection stage because the buyer is deciding who can be called on repeatedly over the life of the agreement. Private sector buyers, main contractors and housing associations use PQQs too, sometimes to approve suppliers for a list rather than for a single contract. Our guides to framework agreements and the tender process explain those routes.

The names you will see

The same idea goes by several names. Many UK public buyers have used selection questionnaire, or SQ. Construction and private sector buyers often still say PQQ. Large companies vetting their supply chain may call it a supplier questionnaire, and in corporate settings a due diligence questionnaire covers much of the same ground. The rules public buyers follow on selection have also been changing under the Procurement Act 2023, so terminology and format vary between buyers. Our guide to DDQs, PQQs and RFIs compares them.

The label matters less than the content. Whatever the document is called, the buyer's own instructions always tell you what applies to that opportunity.

Practical rule: read the buyer's instructions before the questions. They tell you which answers are pass or fail, which are scored, and how much each one is worth.

Why Buyers Use a PQQ at All

It helps to understand the buyer's position. A procurement officer running a contract has to show that the process was fair, that suppliers were treated equally, and that the money is going to a supplier who can be trusted to deliver. If a contract fails, someone will ask how the supplier was chosen.

A PQQ gives the buyer a defensible, consistent way to answer that question. It lets them:

• apply the same minimum standards to every supplier;
• remove suppliers who do not meet mandatory requirements, before spending time on full proposals;
• compare experience and capability on a published scoring basis;
• keep a record of why each supplier was or was not taken forward.

That last point shapes how evaluators read. They are not looking for reasons to like you. They are looking for evidence they can point to if their decision is questioned. An answer that asserts something without proof is hard for an evaluator to give marks to, however true it is.

What Buyers Are Checking, Section by Section

Questionnaires differ in wording and order, but the underlying checks are remarkably consistent. Here is each one, the risk behind it, and the evidence that answers it.

1. Are you who you say you are?

The risk: contracting with an entity that does not exist in the form described, or that is part of a group the buyer has not been told about.

What they ask: registered name and number, registered address, VAT number, directors, ownership and group structure, trading names, and a named contact for the bid. Some buyers ask whether you are an SME, or whether you will rely on other organisations such as subcontractors or a parent company.

What to have ready: the details exactly as they appear in your official records. Check them against the source each time rather than copying them from the last questionnaire. A director who resigned, or a registered office that has moved, will not usually sink a PQQ on its own, but it creates clarification questions and makes an evaluator wonder how carefully the rest was prepared.

2. Is there any reason the buyer should not contract with you?

The risk: awarding public money to a business with a history that should have excluded it.

What they ask: declarations about exclusion grounds. These typically cover certain criminal convictions, insolvency, failure to pay tax or social security contributions, professional misconduct and serious past failures on contracts. Some grounds are mandatory and some are discretionary, and the exact list depends on the rules the buyer is working under.

What to have ready: a director who has read the declarations and can confirm them accurately. If something does need declaring, a clear factual account of what happened and what has been done about it. This section should never be treated as boilerplate or answered by whoever happens to be filling in the form. These are statements the business is making, and they need someone with authority and knowledge behind them.

3. Can you afford to do the work?

The risk: a supplier that runs into financial trouble partway through the contract, leaving the buyer without a service.

What they ask: filed accounts for a stated number of years, turnover figures, sometimes a minimum turnover set in relation to the contract value, and occasionally ratios or a credit check. Where a supplier relies on a parent company, the buyer may ask for a guarantee.

What to have ready: your accounts, turnover figures that reconcile with them, and a short, factual explanation of anything that might be misread, such as a one-off loss. If the contract is split into lots with different thresholds, check which lots you actually meet before you start. Financial questions are often pass or fail, and no amount of good writing elsewhere makes up for missing a threshold.

4. Are you covered if something goes wrong?

The risk: the buyer being exposed to a claim that the supplier cannot meet.

What they ask: confirmation of cover at stated levels, commonly employer's liability, public liability and, where you give advice or carry design responsibility, professional indemnity. Some buyers ask for certificates now. Others accept a commitment to obtain the required cover before the contract starts.

What to have ready: current certificates and their renewal dates. A certificate that expires during evaluation, uploaded without comment, is a small thing that looks careless. Our guide to insurance requirements covers the common types.

5. Will you work safely?

The risk: injury to workers or the public, enforcement action, and the reputational damage that follows for the buyer.

What they ask: your health and safety policy, how responsibilities are organised, where your competent advice comes from, your accident and incident record, any enforcement notices, how you assess risk, how you train people and how you manage subcontractors. In construction and facilities work these questions tend to be detailed and heavily weighted.

What to have ready: a signed and dated policy within its review period, and evidence that the system is used: inspection records, toolbox talks, an incident investigation with the actions taken, training records. Accident figures should come from your records for the period asked about, presented in the format requested, never estimated. Our guide to health and safety compliance goes further.

6. Will the work be done properly?

The risk: defects, rework, complaints and a contract that consumes the buyer's management time.

What they ask: whether you hold a recognised quality management certification, and if not, how your quality system works. How you plan, check and record work, how you deal with defects and complaints, and how you make sure subcontractors meet the same standard.

What to have ready: your quality policy and, if certified, the certificate with its scope and expiry date. Check that the scope covers the work you are bidding for. If you are not certified, a plain description of what you actually do, with an example, is far stronger than general statements about commitment to quality. Our ISO certification guide explains the standards buyers commonly mention, and ISO certification requirements covers what holding one involves.

7. Will you manage your environmental impact?

The risk: pollution incidents, waste handled unlawfully, and the buyer failing to meet its own environmental and carbon commitments.

What they ask: your environmental policy, any certification, how you manage waste, energy and materials, any incidents, and in some procurements a carbon reduction plan.

What to have ready: the policy, any certificate, and an honest account of what you do now. Targets and dates in a carbon reduction plan are commitments. They should be agreed by someone with authority to agree them, not drafted to sound ambitious. See environmental compliance.

8. Have you done this kind of work before?

The risk: appointing a supplier who is learning on the buyer's contract.

What they ask: examples of comparable contracts, with client, value, dates, scope and outcomes, and often referees the buyer can contact. Some questionnaires set a minimum number of comparable contracts within a period. This section is frequently where most of the PQQ marks sit.

What to have ready: a small set of written-up case studies that match the type, size and complexity of what the buyer is buying, and referees who have agreed to be contacted. Your most recent project is not always your most relevant one. Choose for fit, not for date. Our guides to writing case studies, presenting them and managing references are worth reading before you start.

Practical rule: never name a referee who has not agreed to be contacted for this bid. A referee who is surprised by the call is a weak reference.

9. Do you have the people and resources?

The risk: a supplier who wins the contract and then cannot staff it.

What they ask: organisation charts, headcount, CVs or summaries for key people, relevant qualifications, and sometimes equipment or facilities. On frameworks, how you would handle several pieces of work at once.

What to have ready: current CVs for the people who would actually lead the work, an up-to-date organisation chart, and numbers that match across every section. Two different headcounts in the same submission is a common and avoidable error.

10. Do you run your business responsibly?

The risk: the buyer being associated with poor employment practice, bribery, modern slavery in the supply chain, data breaches or harm to vulnerable people.

What they ask: a set of policies. Commonly equality and diversity, modern slavery, anti-bribery, data protection, whistleblowing, complaints, business continuity and, where relevant, safeguarding. Some buyers ask for Cyber Essentials or an equivalent information security standard.

What to have ready: each policy signed, dated and within its review period, and describing what you actually do. If a buyer requires a certification you do not hold, find out early. See Cyber Essentials certification and certification tracking.

11. What else will you bring?

The risk: from the buyer's side, missing the wider benefits public spending is expected to deliver.

What they ask: increasingly, questions on social value: local employment, apprenticeships, local supply chain spend, community activity. These appear more often at tender stage, but a PQQ may ask about your track record.

What to have ready: a factual record of what you have already delivered and how you measured it. Generic statements score poorly, and invented commitments create obligations you then have to meet. Our guides to what social value is and social value tender questions cover this.

The Checks in One Table

How Buyers Evaluate a PQQ

Knowing what is checked is half the picture. The other half is how answers are marked.

Pass or fail

Mandatory requirements such as insurance levels, turnover thresholds, required certifications and exclusion declarations are usually pass or fail. Fail one and you may be removed regardless of everything else. Check these first, before you invest time in the scored questions.

Scored questions

Scored questions are marked against published guidance, usually on a scale where the top marks go to answers that address every part of the question with relevant evidence, and low marks go to answers that are vague, partial or unsupported. Questions often carry different weightings. Spend effort in proportion to the marks available.

Minimum scores and shortlisting

Some buyers set a minimum score on particular questions or overall. Others shortlist a set number of the highest-scoring suppliers. Either way, the buyer's documents say how it works. Read them alongside the questions, not after. Our guide to tender evaluation criteria and scoring explains how evaluators work through answers, and the tender evaluation process covers the wider sequence.

What evaluators actually reward

Across sections, the pattern is the same. Evaluators reward answers that:

• follow the question's structure, taking each sub-question in turn and using the buyer's language;
• describe a real process: who does what, when, and how it is recorded;
• prove it with a named example, a document or a figure from your records;
• stay inside the limits for words, characters and attachments.

They mark down answers that assert rather than evidence, answer a slightly different question, or paste in a general paragraph that was written for another buyer.

Practical rule: a PQQ looks backwards. It asks about your business as it is, so describe what you do and prove it, rather than promising what you will do.

PQQ Versus Tender: What Changes

New suppliers sometimes write a PQQ as if it were the bid. The two stages ask different things.

• The PQQ is about the supplier. Track record, systems, finances, policies. Can this business be trusted with work of this kind?
• The tender is about the contract. How you will deliver this specification, for this buyer, at this price. Method, mobilisation, resourcing and commercial terms come in here.

Pricing almost never belongs in a PQQ, and contract-specific method usually does not either. Keep the PQQ focused on evidence of capability. Our guides to what a tender bid is and tenders versus bids show how the stages fit together.

Common Reasons Suppliers Fail

Most suppliers who fail at pre-qualification could have done the work. They fail on detail, and the same few problems come up repeatedly:

1. Missing a mandatory requirement that could have been spotted on the first read.
2. Out-of-date documents: an expired certificate, a policy past its review date, a signature from a director who has left.
3. Assertion without evidence: saying you are committed to safety rather than showing how safety is managed.
4. Reused answers that do not fit: a paragraph from an old bid that answers a neighbouring question.
5. Weak or poorly matched case studies, or referees who were never asked.
6. Inconsistencies between sections that a single read-through would have caught.
7. Late submission, with no time left to recover when a portal upload fails.

For a longer list, see tender response mistakes to avoid.

Getting Your Evidence Ready Before a PQQ Arrives

The best time to prepare for a PQQ is before you see one. Almost everything a buyer asks for already exists somewhere in your business. The work is finding the current version, checking it is still true, and keeping it where you can reach it quickly.

Build a single evidence folder

One current version of each item, in one place:

• company details and group structure;
• recent accounts and turnover figures;
• insurance certificates with renewal dates;
• certifications with scope and expiry dates;
• health and safety, quality and environmental policies, signed and dated;
• the other policies buyers commonly ask for;
• accident and incident records;
• an organisation chart and CVs for key people;
• three to five written-up case studies with consenting referees;
• a factual record of social value delivered.

Give everything an owner and a date

Renewals and reviews should not depend on someone remembering. A simple list of what expires when, and who is responsible, prevents most of the out-of-date document problems above.

Write case studies when projects finish

The details are fresh, the client is pleased, and asking for a reference is easy. Reconstructing a case study two years later under deadline is where errors creep in.

Keep the answers, not just the documents

Once you have completed two or three PQQs, you will notice that many questions repeat in slightly different words. Health and safety, quality, environmental management, equality, data protection, complaints and supply chain management come up again and again because buyers are checking the same underlying risks. A good answer written once is worth keeping, with a note of which document supports it.

Decide whether to respond at all

Not every PQQ is worth completing. Before you start, check that you meet the mandatory requirements, that the contract suits your size and capacity, and that you have relevant case studies. Our guides to bid/no-bid analysis and the go/no-go decision framework set out how to make the call deliberately.

If you are not sure where you stand, Bidwell's free tender readiness checker is a 90-second self-assessment that points at the two or three things holding you back. The framework eligibility tool suggests which UK public sector frameworks you could realistically apply to, with the documents you would need to gather, and the cost-to-respond estimator works out what a single response costs you in people's time. If you work in construction, the PQQ checklist for public construction frameworks and PQQs in construction go into much more detail.

Reviewing Before You Submit

However the answers were produced, someone needs to review them against the buyer's scoring guidance. That means asking of each answer whether it covers every part of the question with evidence, and checking every fact: names, dates, figures, certificate numbers, referees and anything that sounds like a commitment.

Then read the whole submission end to end at least once. Sections written separately contradict each other more often than people expect. Finally, confirm that every attachment is present, named as instructed and opens correctly, and upload with time to spare. Our bid review checklist gives a structure you can adapt.

Where Software Fits, Once You Get There

This guide has deliberately been about the evidence rather than the tools, because no tool can supply evidence you do not have. A missing certificate, an unbriefed referee or a policy that does not reflect what you do are problems to fix in the business, not in the bid.

Once the evidence exists, though, the repetition becomes the main cost. Rewriting the same answers for every questionnaire takes time and adds risk, because each rewrite is a fresh chance to introduce an error or drop evidence that scored well before.

That is the problem Bidwell is built for. You drop in your past responses, accreditations, case studies, policies and team CVs, or point it at your website, and it builds a knowledge base of your own answers, organised by the questions tenders actually ask. Building the knowledge base is free, with no card and no time limit. When a 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, so you can check it before you put your name on it. Drafting is £20 a month, with no per-bid or per-seat fees. The PQQ use case shows how it looks.

It will not invent an answer you have no evidence for. If your knowledge base is silent on a subject, there is nothing to draft from, and that tells you where the real work lies. Bidwell drafts, you review and approve every word, and a human always signs the bid before it goes out.

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.

Quick Answers to Common Questions

What is a PQQ in procurement?

A pre-qualification questionnaire: the set of questions a buyer uses to decide which suppliers are capable and suitable enough to be invited to tender or admitted to a framework.

Is a PQQ the same as a selection questionnaire?

They do the same job. Many UK public buyers have used the term selection questionnaire, while PQQ remains common in construction and the private sector. Read what the document asks rather than relying on the name.

Do private sector buyers use PQQs?

Yes. Larger companies, main contractors and housing associations use them to vet suppliers and subcontractors.

Do I need certifications to pass?

It depends on the buyer. Some make particular certifications mandatory. Others accept a description of how your systems work. The documents will say.

How long does a PQQ take?

It varies with the length of the questionnaire and how organised your evidence is. A supplier with current documents and existing answers finishes far faster than one starting from nothing. Our guide to how long a tender response takes looks at the time involved.

What should I do if I fail?

Ask for feedback. Score breakdowns show where evidence was thin, and that is usually the most useful information you will get. See debriefing meetings.

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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 the next PQQ you receive.