Procurement without the pauses
Winning the round starts the clock. Every week a pack waits between desks is a week the project cannot get back.
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Download the white paper (PDF)Most procurement time is lost between the gates, not inside them.
Five messages for your leadership team.
Winning starts the clock.
A CfD milestone, a grid offer to accept and equipment with long lead times all keep running while the team works.
The pauses sit between gates.
Packages redrawn, questions asked twice, offers that cannot be compared, and a lender pack rebuilt at the end.
Process first, data second, agents third.
Map how you procure today, fix the two biggest pauses and their causes, build one record, then add agents.
One record, every document.
Comparison, contract, model and lender pack read the same facts, so nothing is retyped and nothing drifts.
Same team, more and better work.
Agents prepare the next gate while this one is decided. Your people negotiate, allocate risk and sign.
CEOs and heads of procurement, commercial and development at renewables developers, IPPs and utilities in the UK and Europe, onshore and offshore.
The clocks run while documents wait
Once a project wins its route to market, three clocks start at once: the support contract, the grid and the supply chain. None of them pauses for a tender pack sitting in someone's inbox.
18 months
After signing a UK CfD, the generator must show spend of at least 10% of pre-commissioning costs, or the required project commitments.
90 days
To accept a GB transmission connection offer once it arrives.
Up to 4 years
To secure large power transformers. Cables take two to three years, and lead times have almost doubled since 2021.
When costs outrun the project
In July 2023 Vattenfall stopped developing Norfolk Boreas in its current form, citing cost increases of up to 40%.
In May 2025 Ørsted stopped Hornsea 4 in its current form after winning a CfD in 2024. Its chief executive pointed to "the combination of increased supply chain costs, higher interest rates and increased execution risk".
Neither was a paperwork problem. Both show how little room there is between award and investment decision.
Procurement now feeds the bid
Under the EU Net-Zero Industry Act, the ability to deliver on time is a test to qualify for renewables auctions, and resilience can be scored. Supplier evidence is no longer only for lenders. It goes into the round itself.
Onshore and offshore alike: the packages differ in size and number. Both lose the same weeks between gates.
Seven gates, and the pauses between them
Drawn as a plan, procurement is a line of gates. In practice much of the elapsed time sits in the gaps, where work waits for a decision or is redone because something upstream changed.
The same seven gates, run two ways
What stays the same
The gates, the decisions and the people who take them. Shortlist, preferred bidder, risk allocation and signature stay with your team and your board.
What changes
The next pack is drafted while this gate is decided. Nothing is retyped. A change is approved once and reaches every document that uses it.
Find your own pauses in an afternoon
Take one package you closed last year. Put the date each gate opened and closed on one line. The gaps between them are your pauses. For the two longest, ask what the team was waiting for, and whether it had to wait.
First, look at what you run today
The first step is not a tool. It is a clear look at how your team takes a package from strategy to signature, where it waits, and why.
Offers that are not the same offer
Each bidder prices a slightly different scope, so the cheapest offer is often the one that left most out.
Questions asked and answered twice
Clarifications sit in email threads, and the same question comes back from each bidder.
A model that is not the contract
Price, indexation and caps move in negotiation; the financial model catches up later.
Dates that do not agree
The grid date, the CfD milestone and the supplier's programme live in three places.
The lender pack built at the end
Due diligence starts from a blank folder, months after the evidence was first gathered.
Start with two. Pick the two pauses that cost you most, and find the reason for each. Fix those first. The rest can wait.
The order that works
What do you run today? Map one package from strategy to signature. Remove steps that add nothing. Simplify what is left.
What does it run on? One record per project: scope, offers, terms, dates and evidence, versioned and owned.
Then add the agents, on the redesigned process, with named people deciding at each gate.
Revisit the real problem first
Why does a tender take as long as it does? Which steps exist because a lender or a rule needs them, and which because "we have always done it"? Is the package split right for this market? Automate a broken process and you get a faster broken process.
Compare like for like before you rank
Ranking offers that answer different scopes is really ranking scopes. Restate every offer onto one grid first, and the real differences show up in days rather than in the final week.
How a like-for-like grid reads
| Line | Supplier A | Supplier B | Supplier C | What the agent raises |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scope and interfaces | Same | Gap | Same | B leaves out one interface |
| Exclusions | Same | Same | Ask | C has not stated them |
| Programme against grid date | Same | Gap | Same | B misses the connection date |
| Price and indexation | Same | Ask | Same | Restated onto one index |
| Delay damages and caps | Same | Same | Gap | Below your last agreed position |
| Warranties and availability | Same | Same | Gap | Shorter term offered |
| Security and credit | Same | Excluded | Same | No parent guarantee |
| Resilience and supply chain | Same | Ask | Same | Evidence the bid and lenders need |
What agents carry
- Read every offer and map it onto the grid.
- Flag gaps, exclusions and dates that miss the grid.
- Draft clarifications and log each answer once.
- Restate prices onto one index and one scope.
What your people decide
- Which gaps matter, and what they are worth.
- The shortlist and the preferred bidder.
- Where to push and where to concede.
- Supplier relationships and the final call.
Onshore and offshore: offshore runs fewer, larger packages with long supplier lists for each; onshore runs more, smaller packages, often several projects at once. The grid works for both, and the record keeps every past offer for the next tender.
Contract and lender pack, from one record
The comparison, the contract, the model and the lender pack describe the same project. When they read from one record, a change made in negotiation reaches all of them, with a name and a date on it.
One record, every document
What has to agree before signature
| Item | Comparison | Contract | Model and lender pack |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scope | The restated scope | Scope of works | Capex and contingency |
| Price | Restated price | Contract price and indexation | Capex and cost case |
| Dates | Programme against grid | Key dates and delay damages | Schedule and milestone tests |
| Risk | Gaps and exclusions | Caps, warranties, security | Risk register and downside case |
Approve changes, do not email them. A price, date or risk moves only with a named approval on the record. The consistency check runs before every gate.
Lenders ask the same questions. Keep every question and answer from the last close, and the next data room starts half built.
The same team, more output, better quality
The aim is not fewer people. It is more packages, bidders and questions handled well by the people you have, with fewer errors reaching a lender.
Quantity
- More packages run in parallel.
- More bidders assessed properly, not cut early for lack of time.
- The next gate ready on the day this one closes.
Quality
- Every number traced to its source.
- Model, contract and pack in step.
- Terms won and conceded kept for the next project.
Who does what
| Role | Agents carry | Your people keep |
|---|---|---|
| Head of procurement | Tender packs, the bidder log, the comparison grid | Package strategy, shortlist, supplier relationships |
| Commercial lead | First mark-up from your last agreed terms | Risk allocation and the negotiation |
| Finance and funding | Model updates, consistency checks, lender answers | The financing case and lender relationships |
| Technical lead | Interface and programme checks against the grid date | Design choices and technical sign-off |
| CEO and board | A board paper from the record, with the open risks | The investment decision and the signature |
A governed system on your data, better with every project
Ignis builds the system around your team, on your own documents and in your own environment. It keeps the record, runs the repeatable work and brings every decision to a named person.
People and gates
The AI manager
Breaks a goal such as "turbine supply to preferred bidder" into tasks, gives each to the right agent, checks the output and stops at each gate for a decision.
The record is yours
Offers, terms, dates and lender answers stay in your environment under your access rules. Each project leaves it better for the next.
What stays human
The shortlist, the preferred bidder, risk allocation, the walk-away and the signature. Supplier and lender relationships.
Each project leaves the record richer: better terms to start from, fewer questions to answer, faster gates next time.
How fast can your next package move?
Ten yes or no questions. Tick what is true today, not what is planned.
Work it out on your own numbers
| For one project | Today | Redesigned | What it frees |
|---|---|---|---|
| Packages in procurement this year | |||
| Days waiting between gates, in total | |||
| Senior days per supplier comparison | |||
| Lender questions answered from scratch |
Start with your two biggest pauses
Not with a platform. First comes a short, low-risk discovery and gap review, then a map of one package from strategy to signature: two weeks at most. The price stays open until we have seen the work.
From discovery to a live tender
Your goals, your package plan, and the two biggest pauses in procurement, with their causes.
One recent package traced end to end on its own documents. What people keep, what agents carry, where the gates sit.
Redesign the process, build the comparison grid and the record, and set the gates for the next live package.
Your team runs a live tender on the new way of working, then embeds it.
Guardrails
- Ignis advises and designs; your team decides.
- Your data stays yours, in your environment.
- Process before platform: tool-agnostic.
Bring one project heading for preferred bidder or financial close. We will look at where it waits today and what would change first. Talk it through with Yorik.
This paper offers a commercial view only. It is not legal, regulatory or investment advice. Market figures were checked in October 2026; contract terms and dates can change.
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