Planning advice for contractors

Most of the commentary on PPN 026 has led with the 20 per cent weighting. It is the wrong headline. What changed is that the menu is gone, and that on the larger contracts the commitment you write becomes a KPI somebody publishes and reports on every year.

Evaluators have seen thousands of Social Value statements. The difference between a low score and a high one is rarely intent. It is evidence, deliverability, and a clear audit trail. This article explains what PPN 002 and the Social Value Model actually require, why most tender answers still fall short, and what a contract-linked jobs-and-skills commitment needs to stand up to post-award scrutiny.

An NEC tender bid is scored question by question, and the courts have read what evaluators wrote. This guide follows four real cases, from a road interchange tendered on NEC3 to an NEC4 programme question, shows how close the scores run, explains the assessment summary each assessed bidder now receives, and sets out what to check in a tender programme before it goes in.

Social value in construction is the benefit a contractor commits to deliver through a contract, scored at tender and monitored through delivery. This guide covers the law and policy behind it, what scores under PPN 026 from January 2027, why commitments fail, and how jobs and skills commitments are delivered and evidenced on a live project, from the roles in the programme to the records each KPI assessment asks for.