Public procurement moves more than 180,000 million euros a year in Spain — 11% of GDP — and most contracts are split into lots accessible to SMEs. The barrier is not your company's size: it is knowing where to look, what to demonstrate and how to present it.
Law 9/2017 on Public Sector Contracts requires public authorities to divide contracts into lots and simplify procedures to facilitate access for small and medium-sized enterprises. Yet the gap between the legislation and practice remains wide: entire sectors where fewer than 10% of SMEs are registered with ROLECE, and billions in contracts declared void every year for lack of competitive bidders. Public procurement is a market that many companies overlook — not because they cannot enter it, but because no one has explained how.
The process has three concrete bottlenecks. The first is monitoring: detecting relevant contracts in time on the Public Sector Procurement Platform, regional buyer profiles and official gazettes (BOE, BOCYL, Canary Islands bulletins). The second is proving solvency: demonstrating the technical and financial capacity required in the tender specification, whether through SEAP business classification or through declarations of responsibility and references. The third is drafting the bid: evaluation criteria, subjective scoring criteria and all administrative documents free of formal errors that would trigger exclusion.
At Summum Consultoría we support companies through the full procurement cycle: from identifying contracts that match their activity to submitting the final offer, including ROLECE registration, review of tender specifications and preparation of technical and financial documentation. We have been working with SMEs in Castilla y León and the Canary Islands since 2007, and we know the local and regional contracting authorities operating in these regions.
We analyse your company's activity, the CPV codes corresponding to your products or services, and the standard solvency thresholds in your sector. We identify whether you hold SEAP business classification or need to evidence it through references and own resources. We verify your ROLECE status and correct any expired or incomplete registrations.
We set up alerts on the Public Sector Procurement Platform and on the regional platforms for Castilla y León and the Canary Islands. We filter by CPV code, contract value, procedure type and deadline, and present you each week with the contracts most likely to succeed given your solvency profile and capacity.
We read the Particular Administrative Clauses (PCAP) and Technical Specifications (PPT) line by line. We identify the award criteria, solvency thresholds, grounds for exclusion and opportunities for differentiation. We design the bid structure and key messages for the qualitative assessment criteria.
We draft or review the technical statement, financial proposal and all documentation in the electronic envelope. We check consistency between criteria and scores, verify electronic signatures and deadlines, and assist with submission on the PLACE system or the relevant regional platform. We follow up until the award decision.
The operational detail: what we deliver as part of the work and what we keep alive afterwards.
ROLECE registration and maintenance
Initial registration or update with the Official Register of Tenderers and Classified Companies: corporate documentation, evidence of financial and technical solvency, and annual renewal.
Relevant tender monitoring
Weekly searches on the Public Sector Procurement Platform, regional buyer profiles (Castilla y León, Canary Islands) and BOE/BOCYL/island bulletins, with filters tailored to your activity.
Specification analysis
Full review of the PCAP and PPT: award criteria, solvency thresholds, automatic exclusion grounds, possibility of special appeal and compatibility with your actual capacity.
Technical bid drafting
Preparation of the technical statement, work plan, environmental or social measures where these are a criterion, and any documentation required for the qualitative criteria envelope.
Administrative documentation
Preparation of the preliminary documentation envelope: declarations of responsibility, ESPD, certificates of compliance with Tax Authority and Social Security, articles of incorporation, powers of attorney and specific annexes required by the specification.
Monitoring and appeal
Follow-up on the file after submission, review of the provisional scoring report, and advice on whether to lodge a special procurement appeal before the TACRC or the equivalent regional body.
A well-prepared public tender frequently benefits from quality certifications that score points in award criteria: to evidence an ISO 9001 or ISO 14001 management system in the technical envelope, the Summum Calidad team takes over.
Many public procurement calls fund R&D&I projects; we combine bid preparation with the identification of applicable tax deductions or innovation grants for the same project.
View service → consultoríaHigher-value tenders require evidence of governance bodies and compliance structures: the corporate governance service consolidates these requirements so that the company passes organisational solvency filters.
View service → consultoríaCentral Government specifications and many regional ones require a declaration that there are no grounds for exclusion from contracting, including those arising from criminal convictions of the legal entity; implementing a criminal compliance programme addresses this requirement at the root.
View service →No. Law 9/2017 requires public authorities to split contracts into lots precisely to facilitate SME access. There are also simplified procedures for lower-value contracts (up to 35,000 euros excluding VAT for supplies and services under the abbreviated simplified open procedure) where formal requirements are minimal. The usual problem is not company size but rather having solvency documentation out of date and not knowing about contracts before the deadline.
ROLECE (Registro Oficial de Licitadores y Empresas Clasificadas del Estado) is the free, electronic register that certifies your company's capacity and solvency before any public sector contracting body at the state level. Being registered and up to date means you no longer need to submit articles of incorporation, tax certificates and Social Security certificates for every tender: you just include your registration number. Registration has indefinite validity, but the associated documents (tax certificates, Social Security certificates, business classification) must be kept up to date; if the registered data expire, the company may be automatically excluded.
Automatic or formula-based criteria (price, delivery time, additional guarantees) are evaluated with no room for interpretation. Qualitative assessment criteria (technical statement, methodology, qualitative improvements) are scored by the evaluation committee and are where a well-written bid can pull ahead of the competition. In contracts where subjective criteria exceed 35% of the total, the TACRC requires them to be assessed by an independent technical committee, which increases the importance of drafting quality.
Yes. A special procurement appeal can be lodged with the Central Administrative Court for Contractual Appeals (TACRC) or the equivalent regional tribunal (in Castilla y León, the TACCYL; in the Canary Islands, the TACP) against the tender specifications, the exclusion of a bid or the award decision. The appeal is free of charge and automatically suspends the procedure while it is resolved. We advise on whether there is sufficient legal basis before filing.
It depends on the contract. An abbreviated simplified open procedure (small contracts) can be completed in three or four working days if the solvency documentation is already in order. A mid-value services contract with qualitative assessment criteria requires between two and four weeks of work on the technical statement. This is why early monitoring is key: arriving with one week's notice on a complex contract almost always results in a weak bid — or no bid at all.