Most people assume that when a public sector tender overruns, the only consequence is inconvenience.
A late decision. A delayed project. A bit of admin drift.
For the buyer, that is often true.
For the SME supplier on the other side of the process, it is very rarely that simple.
During the summer of 2025, I supported an SME client through a public sector bid process scheduled for award in early October. The bid validity period expired at 90 days. No award was made. No revised timetable was issued. Communication ceased.
What does that actually cost a small supplier in real terms?
Cash and irrecoverable cost
Bid preparation is not free for SMEs. External support (me!), internal time, legal/financial review, pricing work, site visits and clarification responses all add up. None of this is recoverable. When a process drifts into silence, those sunk costs simply sit on the balance sheet with no resolution in sight.
Locked capacity and lost opportunity
Most credible suppliers do not bid speculatively. They protect delivery capacity in anticipation of mobilisation. That means:
- Vehicles not deployed elsewhere.
- Staff not committed to alternative work.
- Growth opportunities deferred “just in case”.
Silence freezes decision-making across the business.
Pricing risk in volatile markets
Ninety days is a long time in an SME cost base. Fuel, labour, insurance, finance, energy and supplier pricing can all move materially. When there is no update, the supplier quietly absorbs that risk while remaining bound by a price it set months earlier.
Emotional and cultural drag
This is the part rarely acknowledged. Leadership teams have to keep their people motivated while outcomes remain uncertain. Commercial teams carry the psychological weight of a win that may never come. It is draining, distracting and corrosive to focus.
Asymmetry of consequence
The most uncomfortable truth is this: the buyer carries little immediate consequence for delay.
The supplier carries all of it. Time. People. Cash. Planning. Opportunity. The risk transfer is total, and largely invisible.
I am not arguing that procurement is simple. It is legally complex, under-resourced and rightly cautious. But prolonged silence is not a neutral act. It actively shifts commercial risk onto the smallest shoulders in the process.
Public procurement talks often about partnership, market engagement and supporting SMEs. Those ambitions are not undone by hard decisions. They are undone by opacity, drift and disengagement.
If we want SMEs to keep investing in public sector markets, communication is not a courtesy. It is commercial infrastructure.
