Automating Public Contracts Scotland: How I Built a Tender Pipeline

The Problem With Manual Tender Hunting

Public sector contracts in Scotland are published on Public Contracts Scotland (PCS). It’s the primary portal for government and public body procurement. If you’re a business that serves the public sector; IT, construction, consultancy, admin services; this is where the work gets posted.

The problem? New tenders drop constantly. Some are open for only 10-14 days. By the time you’ve spotted a relevant opportunity, read the specification, decided it’s worth bidding, and prepared your submission, you’ve burned most of the deadline.

Businesses that win public contracts consistently aren’t necessarily better at delivering; they’re faster at finding and responding. Speed to discovery is the competitive advantage.

What Most Businesses Do

Most small businesses check PCS the same way: someone opens the website once or twice a week, searches for keywords related to their services, scrolls through results, opens anything promising, and bookmarks it for later review.

This approach has three problems:

Frequency. Checking twice a week means you might find a 10-day tender on day 6. Four days to prepare a bid that usually needs two weeks.
Consistency. It depends on a human remembering to check. Holidays, illness, busy weeks, and opportunities are missed silently.
Coverage. Manual searching relies on guessing the right keywords. Public sector bodies don’t always describe services the way the private sector does. “Administrative support services” might be listed as “Business Support Functions” or “Managed Services; Category B.”

What I Built

A fully automated tender monitoring pipeline in Google Apps Script. Here’s how it works:

Daily Automated Scanning

Every morning at 6am, the script queries the PCS portal for new tenders matching a broad set of keywords. Not just the obvious terms; a curated list that covers variations, category codes, and common public sector terminology.

The search is deliberately broad. It’s better to catch 50 results and filter down to 5 relevant ones than to use narrow keywords and miss the perfect tender because it was categorised differently.

Intelligent Filtering

Raw results go through a multi-layer filter:

Keyword relevance scoring: Each tender is scored based on how many target keywords appear in the title, description, and category. Higher scores = more relevant.
Value range filtering: Tenders below a minimum value threshold (too small to be worth bidding) and above a maximum (too large to deliver) are deprioritised.
Geography filtering: Scotland and UK-wide tenders are kept. Tenders requiring physical presence in regions the client can’t serve are flagged.
Deadline filtering: Tenders with fewer than 5 days remaining are flagged as urgent. Those already past deadline are excluded.

Spreadsheet Dashboard

Filtered results land in a Google Sheet with columns for: tender title, publishing body, value estimate, deadline, relevance score, status, and link. The sheet is colour-coded by urgency and sorted by relevance score.

New tenders since the last check are highlighted. Previously reviewed tenders retain their status notes (e.g., “Not relevant; wrong sector”, “Bid prepared”, “Submitted”).

Email Digest

A daily summary email arrives at 6:30am with the top opportunities. It includes the tender title, deadline, estimated value, and a direct link to the PCS listing. Urgent opportunities (high relevance + close deadline) are flagged at the top.

The email is designed to be scannable in 60 seconds. Most mornings, the decision is “nothing new” or “two worth looking at.” On a good morning, it’s “there’s a perfect one; deadline in 8 days, start now.”

Bid Tracking

When a tender moves from “reviewing” to “bidding,” the sheet tracks the entire pipeline: bid preparation status, documents completed, submission date, outcome, and post-submission notes. This creates a historical record of win rates by tender type, value, and publishing body; data that improves bid targeting over time.

The Results

Before automation:

Checking PCS: 2-3 times per week, ~30 minutes per check
Average time from tender publication to discovery: 4-5 days
Tenders missed per month due to inconsistent checking: estimated 3-5
Bid preparation time available after discovery: often insufficient

After automation:

Checking PCS: Daily, automatic, at 6am
Average time from publication to discovery: Under 24 hours
Tenders missed: Zero (if it matches the keywords, it’s captured)
Bid preparation time: Maximum available window, every time

The client went from bidding on 2-3 tenders per quarter to reviewing 8-10 and bidding on 4-5. Their win rate didn’t change (they were already good at bids), but their volume tripled because they were finding opportunities earlier and more consistently.

Why Apps Script Was the Right Tool

This could have been built with a dedicated tender monitoring SaaS. Several exist, and they charge £50-200/month. Here’s why Apps Script was better for this client:

Customisation. The keyword list, scoring algorithm, and filtering rules are specific to this business. Off-the-shelf tools use generic categories. The Apps Script solution scores based on exactly what this client delivers.

Integration. Results feed directly into a Google Sheet the team already uses. No context-switching, no new platform to learn, no data export/import.

Cost. One-time development versus ongoing subscription. The annual saving versus a monitoring SaaS covers the development cost many times over.

Control. When the client expanded into a new service area, we updated the keywords in 10 minutes. With a SaaS tool, that might mean upgrading to a higher tier or waiting for a feature request.

Beyond PCS

The same architecture works for any procurement portal or listing site. Some adaptations I’ve built for clients:

Monitoring Contracts Finder (England, Wales, Northern Ireland)
Tracking industry-specific tender aggregators
Monitoring competitor websites for new case studies or service changes
Watching regulatory body websites for policy updates

The pattern is the same: automated scanning → intelligent filtering → spreadsheet dashboard → email digest. The specifics change; the approach doesn’t.

Want Your Own Tender Pipeline?

If you bid on public sector contracts and you’re still checking manually, you’re giving your competitors a head start every single day.

Book a free 15-minute automation audit →

Tell us what sectors you bid in and we’ll show you what a tailored monitoring pipeline would look like for your business.

Nicola Berry is the founder of Empower Automation, based in Falkirk, Scotland. Automating competitive advantages for UK businesses.