PQQ & SQ writing services

The selection stage is procurement’s front door: get it wrong and the buyer never reads your tender. We complete pre-qualification questionnaires (PQQs) and selection questionnaires (SQs) properly — and fix the underlying gaps that keep tripping bidders up.

What a PQQ or SQ actually tests

Selection questionnaires don’t ask how you’d deliver the contract; they ask whether your business is fit to be considered. The standard Selection Questionnaire used across the UK public sector covers three parts:

Most of it is pass/fail. That sounds easy, and is exactly why busy firms lose: a missing insurance certificate or a contract example that doesn’t quite match the requirement fails the whole submission, no appeal.

Where bidders fail the selection stage

• Contract examples that don’t map. Three references are only worth marks when each one evidences the specific scope and scale asked for. We choose and write them strategically.
• Financial thresholds misread. Turnover ratios and net asset tests can often be addressed — group support, parent company guarantees — if you spot the issue before submitting, not after.
• Policy gaps. Buyers expect current health & safety, equality, environmental, modern slavery and data protection policies. We audit yours and tell you exactly what to fix.
• Accreditation mismatches. If the SQ expects an SSIP scheme or ISO certificate you don’t hold, there’s usually an “equivalent measures” route — if it’s argued properly. Our accreditations guide explains the landscape.

What we do

• Complete the full PQQ or SQ
• Select and write contract examples
• Draft self-cleaning statements where needed
• Audit and gap-check your policies
• Advise on financial standing questions
• Build a reusable selection-stage pack
• Portal registration and upload
• Clarification question handling

Because selection answers repeat from bid to bid, everything we write goes into a structured pack you keep — the seed of a proper bid library that makes every future PQQ a half-day job instead of a week.

PQQ vs SQ vs ITT — which stage are you at?

Terminology trips up first-time bidders constantly. PQQ and SQ are near-synonyms for the selection stage; the ITT is the scored tender that follows. Under some procedures both arrive together as a single-stage process. Our plain-English guide to the difference between PQQs and ITTs untangles it in ten minutes — and if you’re already past selection, you need full tender support instead.

Pricing

PQQs are the most affordable way to use professional bid support: fixed fees are modest because much of the work is structural, and the reusable pack means you only pay for it properly once. First-time bidders often start here, prove the process, then bring us back for the tender stage.

PAS 91 and construction selection

Construction bidders meet a particular flavour of the selection stage. Many works tenders use PAS 91 — a standardised pre-qualification question set designed specifically for construction procurement to cut the duplication of answering slightly different PQQs for every buyer. It covers the familiar territory — company information, financial standing, health and safety, equality, environmental management and relevant experience — in a consistent format, and overlaps heavily with the accreditations construction buyers expect, from Constructionline membership to an SSIP-recognised health and safety scheme. We complete PAS 91 submissions and align them with your accreditation profile so the story is consistent across every document, which is exactly what reduces the risk of an avoidable selection-stage failure.

The reusable selection pack we build

The hidden value of professional PQQ writing isn’t any single submission — it’s the structured pack we build along the way. Because selection questions are now highly standardised across UK public buyers, the policies, contract examples, financial statements and self-cleaning narratives we prepare for your first questionnaire carry over, with light tailoring, to the next and the next. We organise everything so your team can assemble a strong selection response in a fraction of the time, turning what was a recurring week-long chore into a half-day job. That pack is the natural seed of a wider bid library, and it’s why first-time clients who start with a single PQQ so often find the second and third almost write themselves.