2020 contract win: Sellafield Industrial Services Framework

Contract overview

The framework will deliver a range of industrial services over a three-year period at Sellafield in Cumbria, with the option to extend further. The contract is split into two lots:

Lot 1: Access services

Lot 2: Asbestos and Insulation Services

We had previously supported KAEFER to secure this contract in 2013, and we were delighted to be involved in the 2020 retender with Operations Director, Paul Hoyle and his team. As is typical for a large contract value and high-profile work, the bid itself was fairly extensive, comprising over 40,000 words of narrative to be drafted for the submission.

Core topics explored in the bid submission

The questions outlined in the bid focused on the following core topics:

• Resource management
• High level mobilisation and transition plan
• Collaborative working
• Health and safety – a big area including:
• Compliance
• Effective safety culture
• Health monitoring
• Working at height
• Lifting operations
• Quality compliance
• Supply chain oversight
• Industrial relations
• Strong focus on social value.

This provided us with the opportunity to involve a number of our bid writers, primarily senior bid writer, Stephen Kennett, and bid writer, Craig Sutch, with social value support from Neil Capstick and The Social Value Practice. The topics are very familiar for our bid team and involve themes that we cover daily; however, a large scale contract like this allowed us to explore topics such as industrial relations, which may not be apparent in every SME tender.

The bid writing process

Our long-term relationship with KAEFER meant that we already had a good background of information and knowledge of the company, who are based locally to our head office.

The bid writing and management process involved the following steps:

• Face-to-face client kick-off meeting with numerous KAEFER department heads and stakeholders to discuss strategy, assign owners, and the process for completing the bid in a relatively short timescale
• Gathering large amounts of supporting information which had to be coordinated with responses
• Daily client progress updates with our bid writing team
• Quality reviews by our quality manager, Peter, and reviewer, John, of all narrative produced
• Design support of front covers, dividers, and response page templates in line with KAEFER brand guidelines.

The result

We heard that the bid had been successful in October 2020, with the award now officially published by KAEFER. We wish them the best of the luck with the contract and look forward to working together again in the future.