Whether that is reflective of the scene in large organisations generally or whether that was atypical I’m not sure. I think tender exercises can very easily cross that line into the realm of spec work and often in larger organisations it is procurement departments that oversee these processes rather than the industry-savvy marketing departments. Therefore there’s a degree of ignorance and I suspect the situation you describe above is not unusual.

I know someone who in recent years was working solo and began pursuing bigger jobs with bigger clients … but this person’s experience was that they were expected more and more to submit ideas/work on spec, in competition with other design firms, before the job was “awarded” to them or a rival. This became (understandably) very stressful and a huge sap on their time and resources. It’s a shame that this designer felt compelled to go down the spec path in order to expand their business (they have since closed the business and work for an employer now). I don’t know if this has been anyone else’s experience – is it the case that the bigger the client, the more “power” they expect to wield over a competitive market for design contractors/freelancers? I hope that generally freelancers are getting treated better than this. I will always say no to spec work; i would prefer to spend the time on more productive marketing efforts to drum up clients who agree from the start to pay for my work.