Find a TenderPlanned procurementPreliminary market engagement notice
Published 8 Oct 2026, 12:50 BST

Official UK procurement notice

Time and Motion Study · UK public procurement notice

Authority: Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (Central government)

ServicesAbove thresholdSME suitableVCSE suitable
Sectors: Research & Development (R&D) (73) Delivery: UK
Planned pipeline valueValue not publishedpipeline notice, not a live tender
Tender notice expected 11 Jan 2027from the planned procurement notice
Contract term 1 yrends 7 Mar 2028 · starts 8 Mar 2027

What is being bought

Published requirement description

This is a Preliminary Market Engagement Exercise - this is not a tendering opportunity or a call for competition.

This is to inform the market of the requirement and gather information and feedback from the market via a Supplier Questionnaire in advance of publishing a future tender.

The Office of the Traffic Commissioner (OTC) requires an independent time and motion study to establish a robust evidence base for the time, effort and resources required to deliver its principal casework, licensing, tribunal, compliance, finance, correspondence and support processes.

The study will identify the end-to-end elapsed time, active handling time, waiting time, rework, hand-offs and variation associated with agreed process families. It will distinguish productive activity from unavoidable delay and system or process constraints, analyse why variation occurs, and interpret the findings against actual and forecast workload. The resulting evidence must enable OTC to calculate the capacity and full-time equivalent resource required to deliver each process and the overall workload at agreed service levels.

The study is not an assessment of individual employee performance. Results must be reported at process, role or team level and interpreted in the context of case complexity, statutory requirements, quality controls, reasonable adjustments, system performance and dependencies on other organisations.

Please note this is a draft outline of the requirement and will be subject to amendment prior to any potential procurement exercise.

The responses to the market engagment will help determine the value and length of the contract.

CPV: Research consultancy services

The lotProcurement structure

single lot · no lot value published
Lot #1Planned 1 yrSMEVCSE
Contract period: 8 Mar 2027 – 7 Mar 2028 (1 yr)
Delivery: UKEligibility: SME eligibleVCSE eligible

Who is likely to bid for this lot ↓

Pipeline intelligence · planning stage: how this market runs before the tender is published

How Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency buys Research consultancy services (CPV 7321), and who usually turns up

Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency’s published record next to the market for the same work. Frameworks and DPS are left out: they draw different bid counts. Whole-market view: Research consultancy services (CPV 7321) →

1

How the contest usually goes

Winner shares use published awards; bid and price charts use contested lots.

Question for the bid
This buyerDriver and Vehicle Standards Agency · all categories
What to do with it
How often do SMEs win?
i

How often small and medium firms win.

Share of awards where the winner’s size is known.

The counts under this question show how many awards have a known supplier size.

Last 36 months.

Buyer: 29 of 123 known-size awards · market: CPV 7321 · UK-wide, n=89
24%56%

Small firms have won here. Neither number says whether you qualify; it describes who has been winning.

How often do local suppliers win?
i

How often local firms win similar work.

Winners with a registered address in the delivery region, out of awards with a known address.

Local means the winner is registered in the region where that award was delivered.

A local branch does not count if the registered address is elsewhere.

Last 36 months.

Buyer: 1 of 3 known-location awards · market: CPV 7321 · UK-wide, n=54
1 of 344%

Most of this buyer’s recorded winners were registered outside the region where that award was delivered.

How long to a decision?
i

How long buyers here take to decide after bids close.

Middle value in days from the bid deadline to the award date, on competitions that published both.

Only decided tenders count, so slow ones still waiting are not in.

Last 36 months.

Buyer: 13 decided notices · market: CPV 7321 · UK-wide, n=8
42 days28 days

Half of these awards have an award date within 42 days of the bid deadline.

How often single-bid or direct?
i

How often work is awarded with no recorded rival.

Direct awards and tenders where every published lot count shows one bid.

Both shares are minimums: some awards have no bid count.

Thin markets produce this too; it is not proof of a tailored specification.

Last 36 months.

Buyer: at least 70 of 136 procurements with awards had no recorded rival · market: CPV 7321 · UK-wide, n=149
51%51%

Direct awards or one recorded bid are common here. Check the route before spending time on a bid.

How many bids did past lots attract?

i

How many bids past lots received.

Each colour is a bid-count range. Only competed lots with a published count are included.

Past bids do not predict this tender.

Last 36 months.

This buyer17 lots with bid counts · all categories
41% had one bid
The market15 lots with bid counts · CPV 7321 · UK-wide
13% had one bid
Buyer / market · select a colour for counts
1 bid41% / 13%
Buyer: 7 of 17 lots with published bid counts. Market: 2 of 15 lots with published bid counts.
2–324% / 7%
Buyer: 4 of 17 lots with published bid counts. Market: 1 of 15 lots with published bid counts.
4–629% / 33%
Buyer: 5 of 17 lots with published bid counts. Market: 5 of 15 lots with published bid counts.
7+6% / 47%
Buyer: 1 of 17 lots with published bid counts. Market: 7 of 15 lots with published bid counts.

How did awards compare with estimates?

i

Where winning prices landed against estimates.

Each colour shows awards below, close to or above the published estimate, one lot at a time.

Past prices are a guide, not a bid price.

Last 36 months.

This buyer10 lots with estimate and award · all categories
30% below estimate
The market30 lots with estimate and award · CPV 7321 · UK-wide
60% below estimate
Buyer / market · select a colour for counts
Below estimate30% / 60%
Buyer: 3 of 10 lots with an estimate and award. Market: 18 of 30 lots with an estimate and award.
Within ±2%60% / 40%
Buyer: 6 of 10 lots with an estimate and award. Market: 12 of 30 lots with an estimate and award.
Above estimate10% / 0%
Buyer: 1 of 10 lots with an estimate and award. Market: 0 of 30 lots with an estimate and award.
2

Assess each lot
i

What past awards tell you about each lot.

See the forecast, this buyer’s earlier suppliers and firms with relevant wins.

No supplier is confirmed as a bidder.

Open a lot for its forecast, this buyer’s previous supplier and possible competitors, from published award history, not a bid list

Lot #1CPV 732112 monthsSME suitableEstimate not published
Expected competition
i

How many bids this lot may attract.

The forecast uses similar past competitions. The bar shows either that forecast or past bid counts; the line below says which.

Each lot shows its own forecast based on its own category; forecasts for different lots of the same notice are not comparative. The bar shows 15 past lots.

A forecast, not a list of bidders.

—No model forecast yet13% chance of a single bid
Past bids on 15 similar lots
1 bid13%
2 of 15 similar past lots received 1 bid (13%).
2–37%
1 of 15 similar past lots received 2–3 (7%).
4–633%
5 of 15 similar past lots received 4–6 (33%).
7+47%
7 of 15 similar past lots received 7+ (47%).
Comparable past lots usually drew 6 bids.
Commercial price forecast
i

Where the award price may land.

The forecast uses similar awards and the buyer’s estimate. The band covers the middle half of likely prices.

No comparable awards for this lot yet.

A statistical guide from past awards, not a price to bid.

—Estimate not published
The buyer published no estimate for this lot, so there is nothing to forecast against. A price prediction here would be a number about a number we do not have.

Who has supplied this buyer on similar work?
i

Who has done similar work for this buyer.

Past contracts are matched by buyer, title and type of work.

A past supplier may not bid again.

No earlier contract of this buyer matches this lot on the published record.

Who could compete for this lot?
i

Who could compete for this lot?

Firms with relevant past wins. On a framework, we show firms on that agreement.

None is confirmed as a bidder.

Candidate suppliers for this notice have not been worked out yet, so this is not a verdict that nobody fits.

About this data
  • Source. Official UK public procurement notices (Find a Tender), reused under the Open Government Licence v3.0. New notices arrive through the day; the figures are rebuilt nightly.
  • Two views, kept apart. The authority’s own track record and the wider market for the same kind of work sit side by side and are never mixed. Where the local picture is too thin, a figure widens to a broader market and says which one it used.
  • Forecasts are labelled. The price forecast and its range, possible competitors and the earlier-work matches are our estimates from past awards: not published facts, not win chances and not price advice. Official notices do not say who is bidding.
  • Every figure shows what it rests on. Not every notice publishes a bid count, a value or a delivery region, so each figure carries the number of records behind it, and one built on few records is marked as such. The on a figure explains it; the counting rules are in the methodology. Spotted something wrong? Tell us.

Procedure terms & legal framework

From the official record
Legal basis
UKPGA · 2023/54 Procurement Act 2023
Procurement category
Services
Notice status
Planned procurement
Procurement threshold
Above threshold (FTS publication)
Regulatory regime
Standard
Commercial structure
Stand-alone contract (no framework)
Competition type
Competitive procedure
GPA / WTO covered
Unspecified in notice
Recurring procurement
Unspecified in notice
First published
8 Oct 2026, 12:50 BST
Last source update
8 Oct 2026, 12:50 BST
Authority reference
T280023314
FTS notice number
2026/S 000-095178
Latest notice
Preliminary market engagement notice (UK2)
Classification (CPV)
Research consultancy services
Delivery area
UK
Official registry OCID
ocds-h6vhtk-0783b1 Find a Tender

How it was run

Official notice
Submission deadline
—

Timeline

8 Oct 2026 → 8 Mar 2027 · 4 dates
  1. Planning notice published18 days ago
    8 Oct 2026, 12:50 BST
  2. Today
    27 Oct 2026
  3. Market engagementin 2 days
    29 Oct 2026, 23:59 GMT

    The purpose of this market engagement is to inform suppliers of the upcoming requirement and to gather information and feedback via a Request for Information (RFI), ahead of publishing a future tender.

    Following the responses received to the RFI, DVSA intends to finalise the tender documentation and publish the tender via the Central Digital Platform.

    Please read the Specification and Supplier Questionnaire sections within the Market Engagement RFI, available through the Department for Transport’s (DfT) Jaggaer eSourcing Portal.

    Instructions for Suppliers:

    • Respond to the questions in the Supplier Questionnaire section and submit your responses via DfT’s eSourcing Portal (Jaggaer) by 11:00hrs on 29th October 2026. This will appear as a Pre-Qualification Questionnaire (PQQ).
    • Search for the opportunity ‘Time and Motion Study’
    • If you have any questions, please raise them via the portal by 11:00hrs on 16 October 2026.

    Accessing the Portal:

    Note: You will need a DUNS number (Dun & Bradstreet) to register.

    If you do not know your number, you can search for it here:

    www.dnb.co.uk/duns-number/lookup.html ↗

    If a DUNS number is not found, please follow the guidance provided on how to acquire one.

  4. Tender notice expectedin 76 days
    11 Jan 2027, 23:59 GMT
  5. Contract startsin 131 days
    8 Mar 2027

Notice history

1 event · 1 release on Find a Tender
  1. Preliminary market engagement notice published
    8 Oct 2026, 12:50 BST
    UK2

Commercial outcome & contract awards

Pipeline notice
Awards (0)
No award published
Contracts (0)
No contract published
Bid statistics
No aggregate bid statistics published

Contracting authority & participating public bodies

Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency

Contracting authorityPublic authority - central government GB-PPON: PTMM-2614-YJDV Berkeley House, Croydon Street, Bristol, South West, BS5 0DAContact email

Official documents & specifications (1)

Official links; attachments are not copied

Notices published for this procedure