PQQ & Selection Questionnaire Guide
The Selection Questionnaire is the first gate in most competitive procurements. Failing it means your bid response never gets read. This guide covers what buyers are assessing, the five standard SQ sections, common failure points, and how to build a bid library that lets you respond to any SQ in hours rather than days.
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What is a Selection Questionnaire?
A Selection Questionnaire (SQ) — previously known as a Pre-Qualification Questionnaire (PQQ) — is the document a contracting authority uses to assess whether a supplier meets the minimum standards required to participate in a public procurement. It is not an evaluation of your proposed solution. It is a threshold test: can you legally, financially, and technically participate in this contract?
Under the Procurement Act 2023, which came into force in February 2025, the SQ process has been standardised to reduce the administrative burden on suppliers and contracting authorities alike. The Cabinet Office has published a standard SQ template, and central government bodies are expected to adopt it. This replaces the patchwork of bespoke PQQs that previously made scaling public sector bids highly time-consuming.
In a restricted procedure or competitive procedure with negotiation, the SQ is typically the first stage. Suppliers who pass the SQ are invited to submit a full tender response (ITT or RFP). In open procedures, selection and award criteria may be assessed simultaneously — but the same underlying information is still required. Understanding the SQ is therefore not just about passing one procurement; it is about building the capability to respond efficiently to any public sector opportunity.
The five standard SQ sections
The standard SQ under the Procurement Act 2023 is structured into five sections. Each section tests a different dimension of a supplier's suitability. Understanding what each section is testing — not just what it is asking — is the key to completing it efficiently and accurately.
Section 1 — Basic information
Company name, registered address, Companies House number, VAT registration, nature of business, and contact details for the procurement. Buyers also ask whether the organisation is an SME and, increasingly, whether it has signed up to relevant government initiatives such as the Prompt Payment Code. This section is almost entirely pass/fail and should take very little time to complete — but errors here (wrong company number, mismatched VAT details) create disproportionate problems.
Section 2 — Grounds for mandatory exclusion
The Procurement Act 2023 sets out mandatory exclusion grounds that a contracting authority must apply. These include convictions for fraud, bribery, money laundering, tax evasion, modern slavery, and certain other criminal offences. If any director or beneficial owner has a relevant conviction, the organisation will be excluded from the procurement. You must declare these grounds accurately — false declarations are themselves a criminal offence. Most suppliers will have nothing to declare, but this section must still be completed in full.
Section 3 — Grounds for discretionary exclusion
Discretionary exclusion grounds allow a contracting authority to exclude a supplier, but do not require them to. Grounds include insolvency or bankruptcy, serious misrepresentation in a previous procurement, poor past performance leading to early termination of a public contract, and professional misconduct. If any grounds apply, the supplier may provide a self-cleaning statement — a structured explanation of what went wrong, what was done to remedy it, and what controls are now in place. Self-cleaning is explicitly recognised under the Procurement Act 2023.
Section 4 — Financial standing
The most commonly failed section for smaller suppliers. Buyers assess financial health using a combination of credit scores, accounts (typically the last two financial years), and turnover tests. The standard turnover test requires your annual turnover to be at least twice the estimated annual contract value. Buyers may also require minimum levels of public liability insurance, professional indemnity insurance, and employer's liability insurance. Evidence required typically includes audited accounts or abbreviated accounts filed at Companies House.
Section 5 — Technical ability
Evidence of relevant experience, usually through a requirement to provide two or three comparable contract references. References should be from public sector clients where possible, within the last three to five years, and should closely match the scope, value, and complexity of the contract being applied for. Some buyers also ask for evidence of quality management systems (ISO 9001 or equivalent), environmental management systems (ISO 14001 or equivalent), and relevant staff qualifications or professional memberships.
Pass/fail vs scored sections
Not every section of the SQ is scored on a numerical scale. Understanding which sections are pass/fail and which are scored determines how much time you should allocate to each part.
Pass/fail sections include mandatory exclusion grounds, discretionary exclusion grounds, and basic information. These are binary: you either meet the threshold or you do not. There are no extra marks for providing a particularly thorough answer to a mandatory exclusion question — but there are significant penalties for inaccurate or incomplete responses. The focus here is accuracy and completeness, not persuasion.
Scored sections typically include financial standing (often a credit score or pass/fail on turnover and insurance thresholds) and technical ability (where the quality of contract references may be scored on a defined scale). In a restricted procedure, the highest-scoring suppliers are shortlisted and invited to tender — so the scored elements of the SQ determine whether you make the shortlist at all.
In open procedures, all compliant suppliers that pass selection criteria are invited to submit a full bid. The SQ questions are assessed on a pass/fail basis only, meaning the quality of your contract references does not influence the award score — that is assessed separately at ITT stage. Always check the procurement documents to understand which procedure is being used and how selection and award criteria interact.
Common SQ failure points
The majority of SQ failures are preventable. The most common reasons suppliers do not pass the selection stage include:
Failing the financial standing turnover test
The standard turnover test requires annual turnover of at least twice the estimated annual contract value. Smaller suppliers frequently underestimate how this scales across larger contract values. Before investing time in a bid, check the estimated contract value against your last two years of audited turnover. If you fall below the threshold, consider whether a consortium or subcontracting arrangement is viable, or whether the threshold itself is disproportionate and should be challenged.
Insufficient insurance cover
Many contracts specify minimum levels of public liability, professional indemnity, and employer's liability insurance. Suppliers often discover at SQ stage that their current cover falls short of the required minimum. Insurance certificates must typically match the company name on the contract — group policies that cover parent companies may not be accepted. Review insurance requirements before submitting and, if necessary, obtain quotes for enhanced cover before the deadline.
Weak or irrelevant contract references
Contract references should be comparable in scope, value, and complexity to the opportunity you are applying for. A reference from a small charity for a technology contract worth £50,000 will carry little weight on a £5 million public sector IT programme. Maintain a set of three to five strong, well-evidenced references — updated with current contact details and recent outcomes — that can be submitted quickly for the opportunities most relevant to your business.
Missing or expired certificates
ISO certificates, DBS disclosure policies, and insurance documentation all have expiry dates. An expired certificate submitted as evidence of current compliance is not just unhelpful — it may constitute misrepresentation. Build a certificate expiry tracker and schedule renewals at least three months before the expiry date to allow for reaccreditation processing time.
Incomplete responses
Unanswered questions, missing attachments, or truncated answers are disproportionately common and entirely avoidable. Before submitting, run a systematic checklist against every section and every attachment requirement listed in the SQ. Procurement portals often reject submissions with missing mandatory attachments — check both the completeness of your answers and the upload status of every file.
Building a bid library
A bid library is a structured repository of pre-approved, pre-written content that your team can draw on to complete SQs and ITTs quickly without starting from scratch on every procurement. For organisations that regularly compete in the public sector, a bid library is not optional — it is the difference between being able to respond to multiple opportunities simultaneously and being bottlenecked by the time it takes to write the same content repeatedly.
The core components of a strong SQ bid library include: company description paragraphs in multiple lengths (50, 100, and 250 words); a set of three to five polished contract reference templates that can be quickly tailored to match the requirements of a specific procurement; copies of all current certificates (ISO, DBS, Cyber Essentials, etc.) and their expiry dates; an insurance schedule summary with current certificate PDFs; and standard equality, diversity and inclusion policy summaries.
Beyond the standard SQ, a bid library should also hold worked responses to common ITT quality questions: methodology templates for your most frequent contract types, social value commitments quantified by contract value, and a CV bank for key personnel likely to be proposed on bids.
Review the entire library every six months as a minimum. Out-of-date case studies, financial figures from a now-superseded accounting period, or expired certificates that somehow remain in the library are a recurring source of entirely avoidable SQ failures. Assign clear ownership for each section and build the review into your operational calendar.
Handling the turnover test as an SME
The standard turnover test — requiring annual turnover of at least twice the estimated annual contract value — was designed to ensure that suppliers have the financial capacity to sustain contract delivery. It was not designed as a barrier to SME participation, but in practice it frequently operates as one, particularly as SMEs pursue contracts that represent growth rather than business-as-usual.
The Procurement Act 2023 and Cabinet Office guidance are explicit: contracting authorities should not apply financial thresholds that are disproportionate to the nature and scale of the contract. If a buyer is applying a 2× turnover test to a contract where the financial risk is low, the work is delivered incrementally, or payment terms are structured to minimise cash flow exposure, that threshold may not be proportionate. Submit a clarification question challenging the basis for the threshold before assuming you cannot proceed.
Where you cannot meet the turnover threshold independently, the main routes available are:
- Consortium bidding. Two or more suppliers bid jointly. The combined turnover of consortium members is typically assessed against the threshold. Check the procurement documents — some buyers require a lead entity and may assess financial standing on the lead alone.
- Parent company guarantee. If the bidding entity is a subsidiary, a guarantee from the parent company can underpin financial standing. The parent's accounts are then assessed against the threshold.
- Subcontracting arrangement. Bidding as the prime contractor with a named, financially stronger subcontractor can provide the buyer with comfort that delivery risk is backed by a larger organisation. Be prepared to demonstrate that the subcontractor's involvement is substantive rather than nominal.
- Targeting proportionate opportunities. The most sustainable solution for growing SMEs is to build a track record on contracts sized proportionately to current turnover, then use those references to pursue progressively larger opportunities. RevnIQ can help identify contracts in your value range with high win probability.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a PQQ and a Selection Questionnaire?▼
Can a contracting authority use its own bespoke PQQ?▼
What is the turnover test and how does it affect SMEs?▼
What happens if I fail the financial standing section?▼
How should I build a bid library for SQ responses?▼
Do I need ISO 9001 to pass an SQ?▼
RevnIQ
Stop discovering SQ failures at submission. Know your threshold risk before you start.
RevnIQ surfaces the financial thresholds, insurance requirements, and reference criteria attached to live opportunities — so you can qualify in or out before spending a day on an SQ you cannot pass.