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Education is one of only two sectors in UK construction positive on every measure this year. Starts were up 17% quarter on quarter and 7% year on year in Q2 2026, and are forecast up 8% in 2026 and 20% in 2027, with further education described as particularly strong.
Against a market where private housing starts fell 63% year on year, that is worth paying attention to.
The framework, and why you are not on it
The DfE Construction Framework 2025 (CF25) is worth £15.4bn over eight years. Twenty-three firms were appointed in December 2025 and it started in January 2026.
Two tiers:
- Tier 1, national, for projects £12m and above — ten firms: BAM, Bowmer & Kirkland, Galliford Try, Graham, Kier, McLaren, Morgan Sindall, Tilbury Douglas, Wates, Willmott Dixon
- Tier 2, regional, for £4.4m to £12m across eight regions — thirteen further firms, including new entrants Guildmore, Meldrum, Neilcott and Speller Metcalfe
The modular specialists McAvoy and Reds10 were folded into the main lots rather than getting a standalone modular deal.
That framework is closed for eight years. There is no realistic route onto it for a firm that is not already on it.
So the question is not how to get onto CF25. It is what sits outside it, and what the firms on it need that they do not have.
Route one: the work below the framework
Tier 2 starts at £4.4m. Everything below that is outside CF25.
That is a substantial market and it is the part nobody writes about: classroom blocks, sports halls, science block refurbishments, SEND provision, remodelling, roof and window replacement programmes, and the enormous ongoing condition and maintenance workload across the school estate.
It is procured by academy trusts, dioceses, local authorities and individual schools, through the Condition Improvement Fund, School Condition Allocations, devolved formula capital and trust capital programmes — not through CF25. Those are conventional procurements, they are accessible to regional contractors and small consultancies, and they are competed on price and on demonstrable capability rather than on framework membership.
Route two: the supply chains of the twenty-three
This is where a design or information management consultancy has a genuine opening, and it rests on a specific gap.
The DfE is an unusually prescriptive client. Its requirements are documented, audited, and quite different from a commercial developer’s. In particular:
Output specification compliance. The DfE publishes detailed output specifications covering area schedules, environmental performance, acoustics, daylighting, adaptability and much else. Compliance is checked. A regional contractor whose usual work is commercial fit-out does not have that in-house.
Government Soft Landings and asset data requirements. DfE projects carry structured asset information requirements and a soft landings process. This is exactly the territory of an information manager, and it is exactly what does not get resourced internally at Tier 2 level.
Net-zero-in-operation modelling. DfE has demanding operational energy expectations. Modelling and evidencing them is specialist work.
Thirteen Tier 2 firms, several of them new entrants to the framework, now have to deliver against those requirements across eight regions. Some of them will have built the capability. Several will be buying it in, and the ones who are buying it in are your market.
How to approach it
Target the Tier 2 regional firms in your region, not the Tier 1 nationals. The nationals have in-house teams. The regionals, and particularly the new entrants — Guildmore, Meldrum, Neilcott, Speller Metcalfe — are the ones scaling into a new client’s requirements.
Lead with the specific capability, not with a general capability statement. “We deliver DfE output specification compliance and GSL asset data on schools projects” is a proposition. “We are an experienced design management consultancy” is not.
Have the evidence ready. Demonstrable ISO 19650 process, named individuals mapped to competence standards, and a worked example of an asset information deliverable. Public sector supply chains ask for evidence rather than assertions.
Register on the Central Digital Platform. Under the Procurement Act, suppliers awarded notifiable below-threshold contracts must register for a unique supplier identifier — thresholds are £12,000 for central government and £30,000 sub-central. Registration is required after winning, not before bidding, and takes a few minutes. Do it now rather than discovering it at award.
The wider public-sector context
Two facts worth carrying into any public-sector conversation.
Local government spends 34% of its direct procurement with SMEs — £29.1bn — and rising. Central government manages 10%, which is worse than 2020, and central departments averaged 8.4 percentage points below their own SME targets. If you are chasing public work, the money is disproportionately in local government and in bodies like academy trusts, not in Whitehall.
The Procurement Act’s transparency duties are now usable. Contracting authorities publish average invoice payment times against the 30-day standard, and individual payments over £30,000 under new contracts are published quarterly. Before you commit to a client or a prime, look up how they actually pay. And on a public sub-contract, section 73 implies a 30-day payment term, with a duty on the authority to spot-check at least every six months that suppliers are paying their subcontractors on time.
Almost no SME uses that leverage. It is free and it is public.
A realistic caution
Education is growing, but it is growing off a low base and the funding is annual. Condition Improvement Fund allocations are competitive and cyclical, and academy trust capital programmes move with their own finances.
Apply the same discipline as anywhere else: a spending target is weaker than a funded programme, and a funded programme is weaker than a procurement notice. Build a position over a year or two rather than betting a quarter’s business development on a single framework announcement.
But of the sectors available to an SME right now, education and fit-out are the two with the most credible growth, and education has the advantage of a client type that buys on evidence rather than on relationships — which is a market a small firm with good documentation can actually enter.
If your practice has the technical capability for schools work but not the DfE-specific evidence — output specification compliance, GSL asset data, operational energy — that is a defined gap and we close it.