Q&A: How do you guarantee that a bid will be completed on time?

Within the public sector, there is typically a four- or five-week window to complete your bid and submit it to the contracting authority; this submission may comprise of thousands of words and be extremely important to your organisation. Our job as a team of professional bid writers is bound by tight timescales and short deadlines – in this blog we discuss the tools and techniques used by Executive Compass to ensure that your bid is always completed on time.

Project management

One of the vital components for a successful bid is good project management. This starts with identifying the requirements of an individual tender: word counts, topic areas and timescales to put together a firm plan, from which we do not deviate. We do this in advance of a project commencing with a client, so both parties are fully aware of what is required, and what is being delivered.

The tender document is then very closely managed throughout its whole lifecycle, using tools such as our in-house bid management matrix and pulse meetings. This allows every single bid to be submitted on time, but also to be fully compliant and completed to the highest standard . Using the bid management matrix allows a writer and bid manager to monitor the progress of a bid, and the checklist element means no documents are ever missed or forgotten.

A full team of bid writers

Within Executive Compass we have 10 full-time bid writers, all directly employed by the company. What this means for our clients is that every single PQQ, SQ or tender document is completed in house and under supervision of the bid management team. Contingency plans are in place and back-up writers allocated so there is no chance of a project being late, forgotten or missed in the case of a staff illness or emergency. There is sufficient resource to complete projects with short timescales or last-minute deadlines as our writers are used to working collaboratively.

Experience, experience, experience

For the past 10 years, Executive Compass has been completing tenders for almost every contracting authority in the UK. In this time, we have experienced all types of situation and are very well-versed in public-sector procurement. We pride ourselves on guaranteeing a bid to be delivered on time, to the highest standard.

Hear more from Bid Manager Sam and General Manager Matthew on the tools used by the team for effective on-time delivery: