Start Before the Tender Exists

Ask Asad Shamim when a public contract is won and he will give you an uncomfortable answer: usually before the tender is ever published. The businesses that succeed in public procurement are those that invested early — understanding departmental priorities, attending market engagement events, responding to pre-procurement consultations, and building a reputation for competence long before a specific opportunity appeared.

This is advice grounded in a career that spans both sides of the table. As the founder of Furniture in Fashion, he learned to compete for large commercial accounts; as an international government advisor and Chairman of the Advisory Board at OM International, he has helped institutions think about what they should ask of their suppliers. That dual perspective informs everything that follows.

Answer the Question That Was Asked

His first tactical rule is humbling in its simplicity: read the question, answer the question, and evidence the answer. Evaluators score against published criteria, not against a bidder's general excellence. Beautiful brochures lose to disciplined responses that mirror the evaluation framework, allocate word counts to marks available, and support every claim with a verifiable example.

He advises bid teams to build an evidence library as a standing asset: case studies, performance data, testimonials, and certifications maintained continuously rather than assembled in a panicked fortnight. The bid that reads effortlessly is almost always the product of preparation that began months earlier.

Price With Integrity, Not Bravado

Suicidally low bids are a plague on public procurement — they win contracts and then destroy them. Asad Shamim counsels against the temptation categorically. A price that cannot fund good delivery is not a competitive price; it is a deferred failure that will surface as disputes, variations, and reputational damage in full public view.

His guidance: price the service honestly, show the buyer the cost logic transparently, and compete instead on efficiency of method and quality of risk management. Sophisticated public buyers increasingly recognise abnormally low tenders as the risks they are. Integrity in pricing, paradoxically, has become a differentiator. He also encourages bidders to model their costs across the full contract life, including the awkward later years when initial enthusiasm has faded and margins are tested; a bid that only works in year one, he warns, is not a bid at all but a negotiation deferred, and public buyers have learned to see it coming.

Build Consortia That Actually Cohere

Many public opportunities — particularly in infrastructure, energy, and technology — exceed the capability of any single mid-sized firm. The answer is partnership, but partnerships assembled hastily for a bid tend to dissolve under delivery pressure. His advice is to choose consortium partners as carefully as co-founders: aligned incentives, complementary capabilities, clear leadership, and pre-agreed mechanisms for resolving disagreement.

In cross-border contexts — a British firm partnering with a Gulf contractor, or a Pakistani manufacturer joining a UK-led framework — cultural preparation matters as much as legal drafting. Time invested in genuine relationship-building before signature is repaid many times over during delivery. His broader work facilitating such international partnerships is described across this site.

Treat the Award as the Starting Line

Winning the contract is the beginning of the only competition that matters: the competition to be re-selected. Public bodies talk to each other, references travel, and framework positions are renewed on performance. Asad Shamim urges suppliers to over-invest in the first hundred days — mobilise cleanly, report proactively, escalate honestly — because early impressions in public contracts harden into institutional memory.

He is particularly insistent on transparency when things go wrong. In private commerce, discretion may be a virtue; in public work, the cover-up is always more damaging than the problem. Suppliers who bring bad news early, with solutions attached, are trusted with more. Those who let the buyer discover it are rarely trusted again.

Small Firms Can Win — If They Aim Correctly

Finally, he offers encouragement to smaller enterprises intimidated by public procurement. Governments across the UK and the Gulf are actively seeking SME participation, and smaller lots, sub-contracting routes, and supplier diversity initiatives have opened genuine doors. The key is targeting: pursue opportunities where your specific strength is decisive, rather than spreading thin across every published tender.

Public contracting rewards the patient, the prepared, and the principled. That is, in Asad Shamim's experience, precisely as it should be — because the ultimate client is the public itself. For updates on his work and engagements, see the news section, or start a conversation through the contact form.