{ "name": "NHS SBS construction works framework", "description": "Lot and scope reference for the NHS Shared Business Services construction works framework.", "publisher": "Glaxtons Consulting Limited", "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/", "licenseLabel": "CC BY 4.0", "attribution": "Glaxtons Consulting, https://www.glaxtons.co.uk", "url": "https://www.glaxtons.co.uk/data/nhs-sbs-works.json", "documentation": "https://www.glaxtons.co.uk/data/", "dateModified": "2026-09-13", "recordCount": 6, "disclaimer": "Compiled by Glaxtons Consulting from primary sources and checked on the date shown. Procurement dates and lot structures change. Always verify against the contracting authority's own notice before relying on any figure here for a submission.", "records": [ { "slug": "lot-1-minor-works", "kind": "lot", "order": 1, "name": "Lot 1: Minor Works up to £5m", "shortName": "Lot 1 Minor Works", "seoTitle": "NHS SBS PS-Works 2 Lot 1 Minor Works | Bid Support", "metaDescription": "Lot 1 of NHS SBS Public Sector Construction Works 2: minor works up to £5m, let regionally across twelve areas. Who should bid and what scores.", "leadAnswer": "Lot 1 covers minor works up to £5 million and is let regionally across twelve geographical areas, with a supplier panel appointed per area rather than a single national list. For a regional contractor this is the most winnable lot on the framework, and it is also the one where the widened band changes who you are competing against.", "keyFacts": [ "Value band: projects up to £5 million", "Let regionally across twelve geographical areas, panel appointed per area", "On the outgoing framework the equivalent lot was capped at ten contractors per region", "Evaluated 60% quality, 30% commercial, 10% social value and sustainability" ], "body": [ "The outgoing PS-Works framework split this range across two lots: £0m to £2.5m and £2.5m to £5m, each with its own regional panel. PS-Works 2 consolidates them into a single band up to £5 million. That sounds administrative and is not. A contractor who held a place on the £0m to £2.5m lot will now be evaluated in the same pool as firms delivering £4m and £5m schemes, against the same quality questions, in a field that has just got deeper.", "The practical consequence is that project references carry more weight than they did. If your delivered values cluster at the bottom of the band, the response has to work harder to show that your systems, supervision and commercial control scale across it, because the evaluator is reading you next to someone whose references sit at the top.", "The counterweight is geography. You are not competing nationally. You are competing for a place in your own area, usually against a field you already know from NHS trust, local authority and blue light work. That makes an honest regional decision more valuable than an ambitious one." ], "evidenceThatScores": "Completed NHS or healthcare schemes with values, dates, client names and contactable referees; live-environment working on an occupied clinical site, including infection control, noise and dust management, out of hours phasing and ward liaison; HTM compliance where the works touch it; and a clear account of supervision ratios on concurrent small schemes, because Lot 1 is bought in volume rather than one at a time.", "pitfall": "Bidding every region you would like to work in rather than every region you can evidence. Panels are appointed per area and evaluators can see where your delivered projects actually are. A thin geographic claim reads as capacity you do not have, and it costs marks on the region you would otherwise have won.", "faqs": [ { "q": "We hold a place on the current PS-Works framework. Do we have to rebid?", "a": "Yes. A framework place does not carry over into its successor. PS-Works 2 is a fresh competition and the current framework runs until September 2027, so incumbency gives you evidence and relationships but no entitlement. Incumbents who assume otherwise are the ones who start late." }, { "q": "How many contractors get appointed per region?", "a": "On the outgoing framework the cap was ten per region per lot. The number for PS-Works 2 will be fixed by the tender notice. Plan on it being a small enough panel that a mid-scoring bid does not get a place, because on a regional lot that is how it usually works." }, { "q": "Should we bid Lot 1 or Lot 2?", "a": "Bid where your delivered project values genuinely sit, and bid both only if your references support both. The £5 million boundary is the test. If most of your completed work sits below it, Lot 1 is your lot, and a Lot 2 bid built on one atypical project tends to score poorly in the delivery questions without improving your Lot 1 position." } ] }, { "slug": "lot-2-intermediate-works", "kind": "lot", "order": 2, "name": "Lot 2: Intermediate Works £5m to £15m", "shortName": "Lot 2 Intermediate Works", "seoTitle": "NHS SBS PS-Works 2 Lot 2 £5m to £15m | Bid Support", "metaDescription": "Lot 2 of NHS SBS Public Sector Construction Works 2: intermediate works from £5m to £15m, let regionally. Who should bid, what scores, and the common mistake.", "leadAnswer": "Lot 2 covers intermediate works from £5 million to £15 million and is also let regionally across twelve geographical areas. It is the lot where a strong regional contractor competes on equal terms with national firms, because the panel is appointed by area rather than nationally.", "keyFacts": [ "Value band: £5 million to £15 million", "Let regionally across twelve geographical areas, panel appointed per area", "Consolidates the outgoing framework's £5m to £15m lot", "Evaluated 60% quality, 30% commercial, 10% social value and sustainability" ], "body": [ "At this band the evaluator's question changes. Below £5 million they are largely asking whether you can deliver repeatedly and safely. From £5 million upward they are asking whether you can hold a programme and a commercial position on a scheme complex enough to go wrong, usually on a live NHS site with a trust that cannot decant.", "That shifts what evidence works. Two or three genuinely comparable schemes described in depth, with the programme risk named and the recovery explained, score better than eight projects listed at surface level. Evaluators at this band are looking for a contractor who has been in trouble on a healthcare scheme and can describe how it was brought back, because everyone has been and the ones who say otherwise are not credible.", "It is also the lot where social value stops being a bolt-on. At 10% of the total score, on a £15 million ceiling, it is worth more than most contractors' margin assumptions, and it is assessed on commitments you will be measured against for the life of the framework." ], "evidenceThatScores": "Healthcare schemes in the £5m to £15m range with programme and commercial outcomes stated, not just values; phasing and decant planning on occupied clinical estates; HTM and HBN literacy where the works touch specialist areas; named site management with healthcare experience rather than a generic CV; and social value commitments that are specific, local to the region you are bidding, and measurable.", "pitfall": "Reusing a Lot 1 response with the numbers changed. The questions look similar and the assessment is not. A response that describes volume delivery capability, when the evaluator is testing programme control and commercial resilience on a single complex scheme, reads as a contractor bidding above its evidence.", "faqs": [ { "q": "We deliver £8m schemes but have never worked on an NHS site. Is it worth bidding?", "a": "It can be, and it depends entirely on how the response handles it. Healthcare experience is evidence, not a gate, and comparable live-environment work in education, custodial or blue light estates can carry a lot of the same argument if it is written to the criteria rather than left for the evaluator to infer. What does not work is hoping nobody notices." }, { "q": "How much does social value really matter here?", "a": "It is 10% of the score, which at this band is usually the difference between a place and a near miss. It is also the section most often written last and least well. Commitments have to be specific, deliverable in the region you are bidding, and framed as things you will be held to, because you will be." }, { "q": "Can we bid Lot 2 in more than one region?", "a": "Yes, and the question is whether you should. Each region is a separate panel and a separate competition. Bidding a region where your delivered work is thin can weaken the overall picture an evaluator forms of you, and it adds submission workload in a window that is already short." } ] }, { "slug": "lot-3-major-works", "kind": "lot", "order": 3, "name": "Lot 3: Major Works above £15m", "shortName": "Lot 3 Major Works", "seoTitle": "NHS SBS PS-Works 2 Lot 3 Major Works | Bid Support", "metaDescription": "Lot 3 of NHS SBS Public Sector Construction Works 2: major works above £15m, appointed nationally rather than by region. Who should bid and who should not.", "leadAnswer": "Lot 3 covers major works above £15 million and is appointed nationally rather than regionally, on a restricted panel. It is the smallest field on the framework and the hardest place to win, and it is where regional contractors most often spend a bid budget they should have spent on Lot 2.", "keyFacts": [ "Value band: projects above £15 million", "National appointment, restricted panel, no regional split", "The outgoing framework ran two national bands above £15m with single-figure supplier numbers on each", "Evaluated 60% quality, 30% commercial, 10% social value and sustainability" ], "body": [ "The outgoing framework split this territory into £15m to £35m and £35m plus, with eight and seven contractors appointed respectively. PS-Works 2 consolidates them into one national lot. Whatever the final number, it is a national panel in single or low double figures, competed for by contractors whose healthcare portfolios are the reason they exist.", "That is the honest bid or no bid test. If your NHS major projects portfolio would not stand next to a national healthcare contractor's, Lot 3 is not a stretch target, it is a lost submission and a diverted bid team during the only seven weeks that matter for the lots you could actually win.", "Where Lot 3 is right, the response is a different document. It is read by people assessing whether you can carry a multi-year capital scheme on a live acute site, and it turns on governance, supply chain resilience, design management interface and the depth of your healthcare leadership team, not on the breadth of your project list." ], "evidenceThatScores": "Completed NHS capital schemes above £15 million with client references at director level; governance and reporting structures for multi-year programmes; design management and interface control where the contract carries design responsibility; supply chain resilience evidenced through actual events rather than policy; and a named healthcare leadership team with the portfolio to match.", "pitfall": "Bidding Lot 3 for positioning. It is the most expensive mistake available on this framework, because the submission cost is highest, the odds are lowest, and it consumes the same seven weeks your Lot 1 and Lot 2 responses need. Bid the lot your delivered values evidence, not the one your ambition points at.", "faqs": [ { "q": "Can we bid Lot 3 and Lot 2 together?", "a": "You can, and it is worth being honest about capacity before you do. Each is a full response and the window between notice and submission is about seven weeks, with Christmas inside it. Two strong submissions beat three thin ones, and evaluators read thin." }, { "q": "How many suppliers will be appointed to Lot 3?", "a": "It will be set by the tender notice. For scale, the outgoing framework appointed eight contractors to £15m to £35m and seven to £35m plus. A consolidated national lot is unlikely to be generous." } ] }, { "slug": "urgent-bid-support", "kind": "intent", "order": 4, "name": "Urgent support: the window is about seven weeks, across Christmas", "shortName": "Urgent support", "seoTitle": "NHS SBS PS-Works 2 Urgent Bid Support | Glaxtons", "metaDescription": "The PS-Works 2 window now runs from a notice in mid to late November 2026 to submission on 8 January 2027. Roughly seven weeks, across Christmas. What to do if you are starting late.", "leadAnswer": "NHS SBS delayed the procurement on 3 September 2026. The tender notice is now expected in mid to late November 2026 and submissions close on 8 January 2027. That is roughly seven weeks, with Christmas in the middle of it, the enquiry window closing on 4 December, SAP Ariba registration and internal approvals all inside it. Most contractors who miss this framework do not lose on quality, they run out of calendar.", "keyFacts": [ "Notice expected mid to late November 2026, submissions close 8 January 2027", "Enquiries close 4 December 2026, five weeks before submission", "SAP Ariba registration needs a valid DUNS number and is not same day", "A four year framework: missing it means waiting until the next one" ], "body": [ "Six weeks sounds like enough until you subtract what actually happens in it. Ariba registration and DUNS verification if you are not already set up. Reading the pack properly and deciding lots and regions. Pulling project references with values, dates and referees who will answer the phone. Getting insurance certificates and accreditations reissued in date. Writing to the criteria. Internal sign off. Then the upload, which is where people discover the portal wants documents in formats and sizes nobody mentioned.", "The single most useful thing you can do before the notice publishes is the part that does not need it: register on SAP Ariba, obtain a DUNS number if you do not hold one, assemble the reference schedule, and check the expiry date on every accreditation and policy. None of that depends on seeing the tender, and every day of it spent after 7 September is a day taken from writing.", "If you are reading this after the notice has published and you have not started, the response is not to write faster. It is to cut scope honestly: choose fewer lots and fewer regions, and put the whole effort into submissions that can score, rather than spreading it across ones that cannot." ], "evidenceThatScores": "Nothing about a late start scores. What recovers a late start is ruthless scope: fewer lots, fewer regions, complete answers. An evaluator marks what is in front of them, and a complete response to two regions beats a partial response to six every time.", "pitfall": "Waiting for the notice to begin. Ariba registration, DUNS, reference gathering and accreditation renewals are all pre-notice work, and contractors routinely discover this in week one of a six week window and lose days of writing time to administration.", "faqs": [ { "q": "How late is too late to start?", "a": "It depends on how much of the pre-notice work is already done. A contractor already registered on Ariba, with references assembled and accreditations in date, can produce a strong submission in three weeks. A contractor starting all of it from nothing in the first week of October is choosing between a rushed submission and a considered no bid, and the no bid is sometimes the right answer." }, { "q": "Can you start before the notice publishes?", "a": "Yes, and that is the most useful time to start. The framework's shape, lot bands, evaluation weighting and portal are already known. Reference schedules, accreditation checks, social value planning and the first drafts of capability content can all be built before the notice publishes in November and tightened against the published questions afterwards." }, { "q": "What happens if we miss it?", "a": "The framework runs four years from 8 December 2027. There is no mid-term entry to a closed panel, so missing the window means routing NHS estates work through other frameworks or open tenders until the next iteration. That is the real cost of a late start, and it is why the seven weeks matter more than they look." } ] }, { "slug": "no-internal-bid-team", "kind": "intent", "order": 5, "name": "When there is no internal bid team", "shortName": "No internal bid team", "seoTitle": "PS-Works 2: No Internal Bid Team? | NHS SBS Support", "metaDescription": "Most contractors bidding PS-Works 2 have no bid team. The work falls on a director or a contracts manager with a day job. How to run it without one.", "leadAnswer": "Most contractors who win a place on NHS SBS frameworks do not have a bid department. The work lands on a commercial director, a contracts manager or an office manager who already has a full week, in a six week window, against firms who do this professionally. That is a resourcing problem before it is a writing problem.", "keyFacts": [ "Quality is 60% of the score, so the written response decides it", "The window is roughly seven weeks from notice to submission, and it spans Christmas", "Panels are appointed per region, so the competition is your local field", "The person who knows the answers is usually the person with no time to write them" ], "body": [ "The failure mode is predictable and it is not incompetence. A capable contracts manager writes the first three answers well, gets pulled onto a live site problem for a fortnight, comes back to a deadline and finishes the remaining answers at speed. The submission goes in complete and scores unevenly, and on a regional panel of ten an uneven score is a near miss.", "The second failure mode is worse and more common: the answers describe what the business does rather than answering what was asked. Somebody who knows the company inside out writes about the company. The evaluator is scoring against published criteria and can only award marks for what those criteria ask about. Genuine capability, described in the wrong frame, scores badly.", "What actually fixes it is not writing capacity, it is separating the two jobs. The people who hold the knowledge get interviewed for an hour or two and go back to work. Somebody whose only job is the criteria turns that into responses. Directors review and sign. Nobody's week gets destroyed and the answers land where the marks are." ], "evidenceThatScores": "The evidence is already inside your business: completed schemes, method statements, incident and recovery records, apprentice numbers, local supply chain spend. It scores when it is retrieved by someone who knows what the criteria reward and written in the frame the evaluator is marking against, rather than left as a list for them to interpret generously.", "pitfall": "Handing the whole thing to one internal person alongside their real job. It is the most common way a genuinely capable contractor produces a mid-scoring submission, and on a regional panel mid-scoring is the same as losing.", "faqs": [ { "q": "How much time will this take from our team?", "a": "Less than most people expect, if it is structured. The heavy demand is a small number of focused sessions with the people who hold the operational detail, plus director review of drafts and sign off before submission. What consumes weeks is the writing, and that is the part that does not need your team." }, { "q": "We have written bids before and not done well. What changes?", "a": "Usually the frame, not the facts. Most losing responses from good contractors contain the right evidence in the wrong place, answering the question the writer expected rather than the one published, and without the specifics that let an evaluator award the higher band. Reading a previous unsuccessful submission alongside its feedback is the fastest way to see which of those is happening." }, { "q": "Do you work alongside our own staff or take it over?", "a": "Either. Some contractors want the whole submission run and reviewed; others have someone capable who needs the criteria interpreted, the structure set and an independent scored review before it goes. Both work. What does not work is an unclear split where everyone assumes somebody else owns a section." } ] }, { "slug": "scoring-and-submission-assurance", "kind": "intent", "order": 6, "name": "Assurance that it scores and submits properly", "shortName": "Scoring and submission assurance", "seoTitle": "PS-Works 2 Bid Review and Submission | NHS SBS", "metaDescription": "PS-Works 2 is 60% quality, 30% commercial, 10% social value. An independent scored review before submission, and the Ariba upload managed.", "leadAnswer": "PS-Works 2 is expected to be evaluated 60% quality, 30% commercial and 10% social value and sustainability. Quality decides it. What that means practically is that a submission needs marking before it is submitted, by somebody reading it the way an evaluator will rather than the way its author does.", "keyFacts": [ "Weighting: 60% quality, 30% commercial, 10% social value and sustainability", "Submitted through SAP Ariba, which requires a valid DUNS number", "Enquiries close 4 December 2026, five weeks before submission", "Regional panels are small, so the gap between a place and a near miss is narrow" ], "body": [ "The most useful thing anyone can do to a finished bid is score it against the published criteria and say where the marks are missing. Authors cannot do this to their own work. They know what they meant, so they read the meaning into a sentence that does not carry it, and the evaluator, who has no such context and a scoring matrix in front of them, awards the lower band.", "A review that is worth having is specific. Not a proofread and not an opinion: a mark against each criterion, the reason for any markdown, the sentences that need rewriting, and the evidence gaps that have to go back to the client because no writer can invent them. That is what an assessor does, and doing it to yourself before submission is the cheapest score improvement available.", "Submission is its own risk. Ariba uploads fail on file formats, size limits, mandatory fields discovered at the last moment, and the assumption that a portal will behave at 2pm on deadline day the way it behaved a fortnight earlier. Uploading with days in hand, not hours, is the difference between a technical problem and a lost bid." ], "evidenceThatScores": "A scored pre-submission review against every published criterion, evidence gaps identified early enough to close them, social value commitments written as measurable undertakings rather than intentions, and the portal upload completed with time in hand.", "pitfall": "Treating review as proofreading. Grammar has never lost a framework place. Answering a question adjacent to the one asked, and leaving the evaluator to award a middle band because the specifics are not on the page, loses them regularly.", "faqs": [ { "q": "Can you guarantee we get a place on the framework?", "a": "No, and treat anybody who says otherwise with caution. The evaluation is the buyer's and no consultancy controls it. What can be committed to is the work: named directors on the engagement, a response written against every published criterion, an independent scored review before submission with the reasons for any markdown, and the portal upload managed rather than left to deadline day." }, { "q": "What does the review actually produce?", "a": "A mark per criterion, the specific reason for each markdown, rewritten text for the sentences that are costing marks, and a list of evidence gaps that only you can fill. It is written to be actioned in the days before submission, not to be admired." }, { "q": "When should the review happen?", "a": "Early enough that the findings can be acted on, which in practice means with at least a week in hand rather than the day before. A review that identifies a missing reference or an out of date accreditation is only useful while there is still time to get it." } ] } ] }