Matthew Walker – One Month In

I’ve been working at Executive Compass for roughly one month now. This blog post is to give a bit of an update on how I’ve been getting on so far and what my first four weeks as a bid writer have been like.

I feel as if I’m on a steep learning curve but I’m very grateful for the ongoing guidance and support that have been given to me by Neil and the rest of the Executive Compass team. It’s very unusual to think back to university and the amount of time that I idled away agonising over my dissertation. Writing 12,000 words about a left-field economic theory seemed like an insurmountably tall order at times. After only a few weeks of working here, I already feel fairly comfortable producing as many words to a high standard for a PQQ within a matter of days. The tips, hints and in-house procedures for writing high quality narrative to an ever-approaching deadline are invaluable and I wish that I’d had them to hand when I was a student.

Gaining Knowledge

I’ve been fortunate enough to accompany Neil to multiple meetings and consultations. At times I was aware that I must have appeared as a gangling, Yorkshirian fifth wheel, but through listening attentively and trying to absorb information I feel that I’ve gained a fair volume of knowledge about bid and tender writing in a relatively small amount of time.

In particular, it’s been very interesting to learn about various industries and their practices. A lot of this has been centred on the sort of things that I’d previously taken for granted and hadn’t considered in depth. Having learned about the internal mechanisms that contribute to the successful running of a manned security operation, I now know that there’s so much more to it than giving some bloke a torch and a walkie-talkie and getting him to wander around the site.

So far, my experience has centred on completing PQQs. The process is surprisingly organic. Everything that I work on is passed around for internal review and proofreading before being returned to me for amendments. It feels liberating to be able to work independently for periods of time but I’m reassured by the knowledge that there is continuous support available.

I’m eager to learn more and become involved in tender writing in the near future. I get the impression that I’ve joined the team at a very exciting time for Executive Compass, so I anticipate having a number of highly interesting projects to work on in the coming months.