The client, a member of The Construction Index’s Top 100 largest firms, was looking to bid for works in the North West, East and West Midlands, and South West. As previous projects had familiarised them with our quality standards and working practices, we were confident in our ability to support them with a winning bid.
Furthermore, we had already supported the client in securing a place on the previous four-year version of the framework. Procure Partnerships is a well-known procurement company which allows local authorities, NHS Trusts and educational bodies to find experienced and high-quality suppliers for tendered works and services, ensuring value for money.
Main challenges
With over 14 years’ experience in supporting clients with high-quality SQ and ITT submissions, our bid writers are extremely adept at providing bid writing services for national government tenders, including those for larger organisations. Some challenges specific to the opportunity included:
- Liaising with multiple client subject matter experts across different divisions of the organisation, ensuring the right knowledge was utilised for relevant responses
- Working on a strategically important submission which would allow our client to preserve their high turnover and profit levels, supporting business stability
- A quality question on how internal and external stakeholders would be managed and informed of project progress throughout all stages of pre-construction and construction projects
- Completing a two-page cost management response detailing how the client would manage costs and mitigate price increases, including for projects already over budget during the pre-construction stage.
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Geographical region:
Nationwide
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Output:
28 pages across 10 quality questions, including three pages on social value commitments
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Weighting:
70% quality / 30% price
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Submission:
Electronic and portal-based
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Outcome:
Successful
Project overview
Our scope of works comprised 28 pages across 10 quality questions, translating to roughly 18,000 words of narrative responses. Due to their previous experience working with the client, Jack Bowman was assigned as lead bid writer, with Ciaran Clint and Lewis Day working in support due to their knowledge of the construction sector.
To support a high-quality, tailored submission specific to the client, Jack produced a bespoke answer plan to structure the client interview. Topics within the question set included:
- Expertise and previous experience: Demonstrating relevant previous experience with projects of a similar size and scope within construction, decarbonisation and retrofit works, alongside the expertise of the proposed contract team.
- Performance management: Proposals for ensuring compliance against KPIs and the performance management system utilised by Procure Partnerships.
- Health and safety: Detailing how health and safety would be managed within live managements for employees, subcontractors and non-construction workers.
- Sustainability and innovation: How the client proposed to monitor and deliver carbon emission reductions during the framework and innovative measures which could be shared with other contractors on the framework.
- Social value: Approaches to delivering social value for the framework, including who would hold responsibility for identifying realistic and achievable commitments.
Within the question set were several challenging and highly specific topics, such as managing stakeholders, cost management and social value. Open-ended questions and a consultative approach to bid writing allowed us to work with the client to identify and integrate unique selling points and areas where they could add value outside of the contracted scope of works. This resulted in more competitive and specific responses, allowing our client to achieve higher marks from evaluators.
As with all projects, responses were subject to a line-by-line quality review, performed by Quality Manager John Winder, before being proofread by a member of our CIEP-accredited external proofreading team. Responses were then sent to the client for review one week prior to the deadline, allowing them to address several placeholders and comments, in addition to proposing their own amendments to responses.
Outcome
When news of the suppliers named to the framework became public, our client got in touch to notify us that they were successful in securing a place on the framework, succeeding in all lots for which they were bidding. This marked the fifth occasion we had supported them in securing a position on high-value frameworks, including for the NHS, Pagabo and the previous incarnation of Procure Partnership’s National Contractors framework.
Having preserved their spot on the framework, our client was delighted with the result, and expressed their desire to continue collaborating on strategically important SQ and ITT submissions in the future.