Can Overseas Experience Count in UK Public Sector Tenders?

An international supplier can arrive at a UK public sector tender with years of relevant experience, strong customer references and a record of delivering contracts of similar scale. There is just one obvious difference: all of that experience was gained overseas.

Does that make the evidence less valuable? Not necessarily. UK buyers can assess relevant experience when determining whether a supplier has the technical ability to perform a contract, and international procurement rules can specifically protect the use of business activity outside the buyer's territory. The bigger challenge is usually proving that your overseas experience is sufficiently comparable to the contract you are now trying to win.

Yes, Overseas Experience Can Count in UK Tenders

There is no general rule under the Procurement Act 2023 that says relevant experience must have been gained in the UK.

Conditions of participation can be used to assess a supplier's qualifications, experience and technical ability, but the government's conditions of participation guidance makes clear that these requirements must be proportionate to the nature, complexity and cost of the contract. A buyer cannot, for example, make previous work for one particular contracting authority a mandatory condition.

For procurements covered by the World Trade Organization's Agreement on Government Procurement, the position is particularly relevant to international suppliers. The WTO Government Procurement Agreement states that commercial and technical abilities should be evaluated using a supplier's business activities both inside and outside the territory of the procuring party.

That does not mean every overseas contract will satisfy every experience requirement. A buyer can still ask for relevant prior experience where that requirement is justified. The question is therefore less about where you delivered the previous contract and more about what that contract proves.

As we explain in our guide to whether you need a UK company to bid for UK public contracts, being an overseas organisation does not automatically prevent you from competing. The same principle applies to your evidence.

One important qualification applies when discussing "UK tenders". The Procurement Act provides the main regime for relevant procurement in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, while devolved Scottish authorities generally continue to operate under separate Scottish procurement legislation. Suppliers should always confirm which regime and tender instructions apply to the opportunity in question.

What Makes an Overseas Case Study Relevant?

Suppose a tender asks for three examples of contracts demonstrating your ability to deliver a nationwide technology service.

You have two possible case studies:

• a £250,000 commercial contract delivered to a small UK company
• a £15 million government technology contract delivered across Canada

The UK example may feel like the safer choice because it is local. But if the Canadian project involved comparable technology, thousands of users, multiple sites and a similarly complex mobilisation, it could provide considerably stronger evidence.

When choosing examples, look beyond the country and assess the factors an evaluator is likely to care about.

Our guidance on demonstrating past performance in a bid explores the importance of selecting examples that align with the scope and complexity of the new opportunity.

The strongest case study is not automatically the closest geographically. It is the example that gives the evaluator the clearest reason to believe you can perform the new contract successfully.

Make the Comparison Explicit

There is another problem international suppliers can encounter: the relevance may be obvious to your bid team but not to the evaluator.

Consider this statement:

We delivered a digital transformation programme for a government agency between 2023 and 2025.

It tells the evaluator very little. Which services did you deliver? How many users were involved? How quickly did you mobilise? What performance did you achieve? How does any of that relate to the requirement being evaluated?

A stronger case study makes those connections clear. Depending on the tender, you might highlight:

• ‍Scale: "The programme supported 18,000 users across 46 operational locations."
• ‍Complexity: "Migration was completed while maintaining continuous access to business-critical services."
• ‍Performance: "We maintained 99.95% service availability during the final 12 months of delivery."
• ‍Relevance: "The project required the same cloud migration and service-desk capabilities specified in this contract."

Do not expect an evaluator to perform that comparison for you. Even when a case study is an excellent match, the response needs to explain why.

Translate International Experience Into the UK Context

Overseas case studies can introduce practical details that are unfamiliar to a UK evaluator. A public body in your home country may be well known locally but completely unknown in Britain. Contract values may be quoted in another currency. Industry terminology, professional qualifications and government structures may also differ.

Make your evidence easy to interpret. For example, if you are describing a AUD 20 million contract, you could provide the original value and an approximate sterling equivalent where the comparison would help. If the customer is a state or federal agency, briefly explain its role rather than assuming the evaluator knows where it sits within that country's public sector.

The same applies to procurement terminology. Our guide to UK procurement terminology for international bidders explains how apparently familiar concepts can have different formal meanings in the UK.

You do not need to disguise the fact that the project was delivered internationally. Instead, remove unnecessary work for the evaluator. Make the similarities clear, acknowledge material differences and demonstrate why the experience remains relevant.

UK-Specific Requirements Still Matter

Overseas experience can demonstrate excellent delivery capability without proving every requirement associated with a UK contract.

Imagine that your organisation has delivered healthcare software successfully across several European countries. Those projects may provide compelling evidence of implementation, technical integration, change management and user adoption. They do not, however, automatically prove that you understand every UK healthcare requirement.

Depending on the procurement, suppliers might need to address UK-specific matters such as professional registrations, security requirements, safeguarding, accessibility, data protection or sector standards.

This is where it helps to separate two questions:

• ‍What transferable capability does our international experience prove?
• ‍What UK-specific assurance do we still need to provide?

Government supplier selection guidance states that technical ability can include experience and past performance alongside project-specific technical or legal requirements. It also says conditions must allow for equivalents where particular qualifications or standards are requested, including international equivalents where applicable.

An international qualification should therefore not automatically be dismissed simply because it has a different name. Equally, suppliers should not assume that a qualification from another jurisdiction is equivalent without demonstrating the connection.

Check Which Legal Entity Actually Owns the Experience

This issue can become more complicated for multinational groups.

Suppose RFPVerse is helping Company UK Ltd pursue a tender, but all the relevant case studies were delivered by Company Europe GmbH, a sister business within the same group.

Writing "we have delivered..." without explaining that relationship could create a problem.

Before relying on group experience, establish:

1. Which legal entity entered into the previous contract?
2. Which entity is submitting the new tender?
3. What resources, people or capability from the experienced organisation will support delivery?
4. Is the bidder formally relying on another organisation to satisfy a condition of participation?
5. What evidence does the tender require to demonstrate that arrangement?

The Procurement Act provides for circumstances in which a supplier can rely on an associated supplier to satisfy a condition of participation, but the precise structure and evidence still matter.

The safest approach is transparency. If the bidding company did not deliver the reference contract itself, explain exactly who did and how that experience will benefit the proposed delivery team. Do not present group credentials in a way that implies experience belongs directly to the bidding entity when it does not.

Can You Use Experience From Partners and Subcontractors?

The same question can arise where an international supplier enters the UK through a consortium or delivery partnership.

A specialist subcontractor may hold precisely the experience the buyer wants. A consortium member might already have several UK public sector customers. Your parent company may supply the technical resources needed to deliver.

This can strengthen a tender, but do not assume that simply naming an experienced organisation allows you to claim all of its track record as your own.

Read the participation requirements carefully and determine:

• whether experience from another organisation is permitted
• which organisation satisfies each requirement
• what role that organisation will have during delivery
• whether formal commitments are required
• how responsibilities will be divided after award

Your bid should leave the evaluator in no doubt about who has the capability and how that capability will be available to the contract.

Make Overseas References Easy to Verify

A convincing written case study may still need to be verified.

This sounds straightforward until the named customer contact sits eight time zones away, no longer works for the organisation or receives an unexpected English-language enquiry from a UK contracting authority.

Before submitting references, check the practical details.

Make sure the contact information is current. Tell your referee that you are using the contract as evidence and that they may be contacted. Confirm international telephone prefixes and provide an email address where appropriate.

If the referee is not comfortable communicating in English, review the tender requirements and decide how best to handle this before submission.

Confidentiality can create another difficulty. Some clients will not permit their names, contract values or project details to appear in tender responses.

Do not invent a substitute or quietly remove information the buyer has specifically requested. Raise a clarification where necessary and explain confidentiality restrictions in accordance with the tender instructions.

Common Mistakes When Using Overseas Experience

International experience becomes much easier to evaluate when it is selected and presented deliberately. Several mistakes can weaken otherwise strong evidence:

1. Choosing a UK example simply because it is British. Relevance should normally be the stronger consideration.
2. Assuming a famous customer needs no explanation. A household name in your country may mean little to a UK evaluator.
3. Describing activity without results. "We implemented the system" is less persuasive than evidence of performance after implementation.
4. Claiming group experience without explaining ownership. Identify the entity that actually delivered the contract.
5. Ignoring regulatory differences. Acknowledge what transfers and what needs adapting for UK delivery.
6. Using an inaccessible referee. Check availability and contact information before naming them.
7. Calling two requirements equivalent without proving it. Show the evaluator the basis for the comparison.

None of these problems means overseas experience is inherently weak. Most are presentation or preparation issues.

Build Your Evidence Library Before the Tender Arrives

If you are planning to pursue several UK opportunities, do not rebuild every case study from scratch.

Create an evidence record for each significant contract containing information such as:

• customer and country
• contract period
• original contract value and currency
• services or products supplied
• scale and volumes
• delivery challenges
• results and KPIs
• key personnel involved
• reference details
• confidentiality restrictions
• standards or regulatory requirements
• lessons learned
• potential relevance to future tender themes

The aim is not to create generic answers that can be pasted unchanged into every submission. It is to make your evidence easier to find, compare and tailor.

Our bid library building support includes organising case studies, metrics and credentials so bid teams can retrieve strong evidence without repeatedly searching through old proposals and shared folders.

For an international bidder, that library can also identify where the business has plenty of global evidence but limited proof against genuinely UK-specific requirements. Those gaps can then inform partnership, recruitment or market-entry plans before they become a problem in a live tender.

Put Relevance Ahead of Geography

Overseas experience does not stop being valuable when you bid for a UK public sector contract.

A successful government programme in Canada, infrastructure contract in Australia or technology project in Germany may provide excellent evidence if its scope, complexity and outcomes reflect what the UK buyer needs. Your job is to make that relevance obvious.

Choose examples against the tender requirements rather than simply looking for the nearest geographical match. Explain unfamiliar context, provide measurable outcomes, distinguish between transferable capability and UK-specific requirements, and be precise about which organisation actually owns the experience.

At RFPVerse, we help international suppliers interpret UK tender requirements, identify the strongest evidence available across their business and turn existing experience into clear, relevant case studies.

If your organisation has a strong overseas track record but is unsure how to present it for the UK market, speak to RFPVerse about preparing your evidence and building a more effective public sector bid.