Some new clients have reservations about the public sector tender process – for instance, common objections being that buyers already have the chosen bidder in mind, or that the lowest price submitted will simply be awarded the contract.
However, the public sector is bound by strict evaluation criteria and a requirement to appoint the ‘Most Advantageous Tender,’ determined by the quality of the bid submission as well as price – underscoring the importance of high-quality bid writing.
Framework agreements represent a strong option as an initial pathway into the public sector market. There is less risk involved in comparison to a single-supplier contract, and represents a good opportunity to begin building public sector client base for contract examples and case studies.
In June 2025, we supported a new client submitting a first-time bid for a place on the Science and Technology Facility Council (STFC) BaU framework, to provide architectural services for the UK Research and Innovation organisation.
Project overview: the tender brief and our scope of works
We were appointed to support an international architectural practice bidding for a national public sector framework. The intention of the framework was to provide contracting authorities rapid access to architectural teams capable of delivering new build and refurbishment projects within live, highly regulated environments.
In total, our scope comprised 13,500 words of highly persuasive and STFC-tailored narrative divided across 6 questions – covering themes such as:
- Relevant experience
- Resource management
- Quality
- Sustainability
- Social value
- Lessons learned
- And design standards and processes.
Challenges: strict criteria, first-time bidding and international experience
The framework required strict adherence to technical and compliance criteria, with a zero-tolerance approach to non-compliance due to the nature of the new build and refurbishment works, often within live, operational environments such as research campuses, laboratories, and secure facilities.
While the client had a locally-based Oxford architectural practice and experience working in research, science, healthcare and education environments, much of their specialist scientific and laboratory experience has been delivered in Australia. This required careful positioning to ensure relevance, compliance, and credibility within a UK public-sector procurement context.
Senior Bid Writer Ciaran Clint was assigned as dedicated bid writing lead on the project. Our support began with a series of structured information-gathering calls via Microsoft Teams meetings with the Managing Principal of the practice, focusing on:
- Mapping international project experience to UK regulatory, safety, and procurement expectations, to align scientific building experience with public-sector standards, including the RIBA Plan of Work, NHS Blue Book stages, CDM regulations, Principal Designer and Building Safety Act duties.
- Interpreting framework guidance and specification requirements, such as limits on staff schedules and role definitions, ensuring correct treatment of associated persons, specialist roles, and sub-consultants.
- Understanding the client’s core strengths across science, research, and education environments to verify their ability to meet or better all mandatory compliance criteria and identify any key differentiators to be highlighted in the responses.
- Identifying existing evidence that could be repurposed for social value, sustainability, fire safety, and design governance responses, providing assurances to the authority of their experience and capability to deliver similar works under the STFC framework.
Initial conversations allowed us to proactively identify and manage potential risks and enabled us to ensure all responses were grounded in existing project evidence, adding credibility to the value statements made while clearly articulating benefits that could be provided to framework members.
Delivery: end-to-end bid management and consultation
Following initial information-gathering calls, we established a clear submission plan with the client that aligned responsibilities, timescales for key information to be shared, and review milestones against the tender timetable.
The client’s Managing Principal coordinated information gathering between the practice’s international architectural team, subject matter experts and specialist consultants, providing hundreds of pages worth of information and case studies. Detailed information support specific, highly detailed responses which have relevance to the tender service, but also the contract specification.
To support high-quality, persuasive responses which directly address authority requirements, we worked closely with the Managing Principal to:
- Extracted relevant evidence from past projects to present their breadth and depth of technical experience
- Aligned existing evidence and experience to the specification, demonstrating competency and capability to deliver
- Ensured consistency across method statements, case studies, and supporting documentation.
Prior to the submission, we undertook a full line-by-line review to confirm:
- Internal consistency across all responses
- Alignment between narrative answers, CVs, and supporting documentation
- Formatting consistency, naming convention adherence, and upload compliance with portal requirements.
This also including supporting the client through the final upload process, conducting a “sense check” to verify all documents were correctly labelled, complete, and submitted on time. Our internal processes for submission checks proactively eliminate potential risks of a noncompliant submission, which could result in tenders being disqualified.
Submission outcome: first-time success and ongoing support
A total of 34 architectural practices submitted bids, reflecting the highly competitive nature of the tender process and the high standards expected.
Our client’s submission was ranked within the top three, achieving second place overall. This marked a significant milestone for the practice as their first successful appointment to a UK public-sector framework.
The client shared feedback, stating ‘We are absolutely thrilled with this result! Our first framework win!’ with the quality weighting accounting for 70% of the overall tender score.
Since then, our client has enlisted our support on subsequent projects – including a Crown Commercial Services framework – and have expressed their intention to continue enlisting our bid writing support on future submissions.