Many companies approach Executive Compass when they have a business-critical or ‘must-win’ bid, consulting our expert bid writers and bid reviewers as part of their tender preparation. In response to increased demand, we introduced our pre-bid consultancy and capture planning service earlier this year, supporting clients to acquire or retain key contracts and framework agreements.
Informed by our 85% success rate and supporting with over 7,000 tender submissions since our inception in 2009, we share just a few of our tips to help structure your tender preparation and streamline pre-bid activities.
1. Begin tender preparation once the market engagement notice is released
New changes ushered in by the Procurement Act 2023 include greater guidance around pre-bid activity, including the ‘‘planned procurement notices’ replacing prior information notices (PINs). This supports both contracting authorities and suppliers in establishing a more structured bid pipeline.
Your tender preparation should begin as soon as the market engagement notice has been issued, ensuring you gain a prompt start and competitive advantage against other bidders.
As part of your preparation, you may undertake activities such as:
- Collect and collate key certifications, accreditations and appendices from your bid library, ensuring they are all within date and easily accessible
- Compile crucial evidence, such as images, statistics and KPIs, to be used in case studies, contract examples and bid responses – increasing the overall persuasiveness of the submission
- Consider and develop your ‘win themes’ and unique selling points to differentiate your submission from other bidders – what makes you ideally positioned to deliver the service?
- Anticipate themes and topics which are likely to be addressed, either through the previous version of the tender or similar submissions. Examples include mobilisation, health and safety, resourcing or quality management and assurance.
Typically, our pre-bid consultancy support begins at this stage and can continue on to bid writing or bid review support once a tender opportunity is live, supporting a seamless submission.
2. Read and review the specification and tender documents
Once the tender notice goes live and the documentation has been issued, it can be tempting to immediately start writing and completing documents. However, this increases the risk of something being missed or omitted or a sloppy and rushed quality submission.
All staff members involved in the bid should dedicate adequate time to reading the specification or client brief in detail, making careful note of the works or service requirements, and KPIs and specified parts, materials and equipment.
The specification is not the only document which should be reviewed at this stage. Other key information can be included in the invitation to tender (ITT) document, KPIs and social value appendices, all of which will inform content produced as part of the submission.
3. Create a detailed, project-specific bid plan
Bid planning is critical to ensuring a smooth, organised and stress-free submission – eliminating the risk of any unwanted surprises later in the project pipeline. As every tender is different, your bid plan should reflect the different requirements of each submission. Following the review of the documents, assemble the bid team and:
- Assign a task owner responsible for each document in accordance with their roles, such as the pricing schedule to a commercial/contract manager
- Set internal deadlines for finalising each to allow adequate time for completion prior to the submission, minimising any last-minute rush to submit
- Schedule time with subject matter experts to discuss responses if required, ensuring they are technically accurate and achievable
- Maintain a project-specific spreadsheet to monitor progress against internal deadlines – we recommend our bid management matrix.
Bid plans are a critical part of project management, particularly for larger or must-win submissions. Referring to your bid plan throughout the tender submission will also allow you to make adjustments to avoid the project slipping.
4. Produce an answer plan for each quality question
An equally important element of tender preparation is answer planning each quality response. Creating an answer plan ensures that you comprehensively answer each element of the question, do not get sidetracked into including irrelevant content and reserve adequate words or pages for each topic covered in the question.
Answer plans should include:
- Planned headings and subheadings within the response, avoiding a ‘wall of text’ approach and making it easier for the evaluator to read
- The ‘what’, ‘how’ and ‘why’ for each question part within responses, ensuring you are emphasising the benefits of your proposed approaches to the authority
- Opportunities for brief case studies and statistical evidence to strengthen the credibility of your forward-facing response – for instance, customer satisfaction levels on similar contracts
- Referring to specific elements of the specification, demonstrating compliance and alignment with the authority’s requirements.
Quality questions in public sector tenders have become increasingly multifaceted and challenging over the years. With tight word or page limits to work towards, answer planning ensures your content is highly relevant and targeted, whilst also avoiding time spent trimming down a response.
Support with tender preparation
Our team are highly experienced in supporting clients with tender preparation for must-win, business-critical bid submissions. This includes not only our pre-bid consultancy service, but our bid writing and bid review services and bid training sessions, which can be adapted and tailored to include an initial ‘storyboarding’ session to identify the buyer’s themes and priorities.
To discuss how we can provide expert support with tender preparation, contact one of our sales and marketing team today at info@executivecompass.co.uk or via telephone at 0800 612 5563.