What “Planned” actually hides: the pre-market notices worth catching

By the time an EV charging tender is published, the suppliers most likely to win it are often already in the conversation. They talked to the buyer early, helped shape what the requirement should look like, and understood it long before the formal notice appeared. That advantage is not luck. It is won in the pre-market stage, the window most suppliers never see.

Part of the reason is that the two main UK sources, Find a Tender and Contracts Finder, file almost every early-stage notice under a single word: “Planned”. It is accurate, but it is vague, and it flattens some very different signals into one grey label. In our own classification of these early-stage notices, about a third were not really pre-market at all, and the rest were a mix of quite distinct notice types, each asking for a different response.

The pre-market notices that matter most

Behind the single “Planned” label sit several very different notices. These are the ones worth knowing apart.

• Prior Information Notice (PIN): a heads-up that a procurement is coming, sometimes months out. No action required yet, but a clear signal to start preparing and watching.
• Pre-Market Engagement (PME): the buyer is consulting the market before writing the tender. At its best it is the highest-influence stage, your chance to shape the specification before it is fixed, but read it with care: not every engagement is genuine, and it pays to be deliberate about what you give away.
• Request for Information (RFI): the buyer is gathering market input to firm up their approach. Responding puts your capability in front of them early and on the record.
• Expression of Interest (EOI): the buyer wants suppliers to register formally. Miss it and you may simply not be on the list when the tender goes live.
• Pre-Qualification (PSQ): the buyer is deciding who makes the shortlist. This is usually a must-respond, with a firm deadline, and it is a gate: no response, no place in the next stage.

The difference between these is the difference between a note in your diary and a deadline you cannot miss. A label that just says “Planned” tells you none of it.

What we have been building

EVTenders now reads each early-stage EV notice for what it actually is and tags it with the right type. The vague “Planned” bucket becomes a set of clear, sortable signals.

And where a notice carries a response deadline, it shows a “respond by” date with the days remaining, so the ones that need a reply, and by when, are impossible to miss.

How to use it

You can filter straight to the pre-market stage and read each notice for what it is, so the diary-note PINs and the action-required PSQs are never mixed together again. And if you are on Pro, you can save that search and get a daily alert when a new pre-market notice appears, which matters because the pre-market window is short and closes quietly.

Right now, for instance, pre-market notices from London Borough of Enfield, Yorkshire Water and Wrexham Council are each open with their own respond-by date.

Being early is the whole advantage. It is the difference between helping to write the requirement and turning up on day one to bid against everyone else on price. The signals were always there. We have just made them easy to see.

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