SQ, PQQ, ITT, RFQ: tender documents explained

Public tenders arrive as a zip file of documents with a fog of acronyms. They resolve into a simple structure once you know that every procurement asks exactly two questions: *can this firm do the work?* (selection) and *what is this firm offering?* (award). Every document in the pack serves one of those two questions.

The selection stage: SQ and PQQ

The SQ (Selection Questionnaire) — still widely called a PQQ (Pre-Qualification Questionnaire) from the pre-2016 terminology — asks about your firm: identity, financial standing, insurance, relevant experience, health and safety, and the mandatory exclusion grounds (fraud, tax offences and similar). It is largely standardised, which is why a well-maintained evidence pack answers most of it by copy-and-paste — how to bid for council contracts lists what belongs in that pack. Selection is pass/fail or threshold-scored: it shortlists, it does not win you anything.

The award stage: ITT and its cousins

The ITT (Invitation to Tender) is the main event: the document set inviting your actual offer. Depending on procedure and era you may see ITSFT (invitation to submit final tenders), RFP (request for proposal, more common in private sector and IT), or RFQ (request for quotation — usually smaller, price-led purchases). Inside the ITT pack, three documents decide everything:

1. The specification — what the buyer wants delivered. Price from this, not from the summary. Reading it against the scoring grid is a skill of its own: how to read an ITT. 2. The award criteria and weightings — how quality and price are scored, question by question. Britain's evaluators score what is written against these criteria, nothing else. MEAT ("most economically advantageous tender") is the traditional name for this quality-plus-price approach; the Procurement Act 2023 renamed the standard to MAT ("most advantageous tender"), signalling that lowest price need not win. 3. The contract terms — read before bidding, because submitting usually means accepting them. TUPE clauses, uncapped liability and painful KPIs live here.

The supporting cast

Clarification questions are your formal channel to ask about ambiguities — answers are published to all bidders, and asking good ones is a strength, not a weakness. The form of tender and certificates (non-collusion, anti-canvassing) are signature formalities that still disqualify people who forget them. Social value questions carry real weighting in most public bids — social value in bids covers scoring points there honestly.

The practical takeaway

Open every tender by finding three things: the deadline and submission portal, the award criteria and weightings, and the specification. Those tell you whether to bid at all — is this tender worth bidding? — before you spend an evening on anything else in the zip.