Main challenges
It was a business critical contract for the client as they were the incumbent provider and work through this contract provided the vast majority of business for them across the winter.
Some of the tender responses required a lot of technical information regarding plant and equipment.
Responses had to be highly localised to reflect the client’s local knowledge and understanding of key issues around snow clearing, e.g. which areas were prone to black ice.
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Geographic region:
Northumberland, North East
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Output:
Output 7,250 words across six method statements
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Weighting:
100% quality
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Submission:
Electronic, portal-based
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Outcome:
Client was successful across all lots tendered for
Overview
The client was the incumbent for one of the lots in this contract, and was determined to not only retain that location, but also expand his operation so that more of his operatives’ jobs could be sustained through the winter where his other activities slowed down.
This was therefore business critical, and the client was extremely motivated and accommodating throughout the process. Over a series of interviews, the bid writers worked with the client to collect detailed information required to answer the six method statements covering:
- Equipment and maintenance schedule
- Approach to snow clearing across the lots tendered for
- Contract examples evidencing previous experience.
As the incumbent, the client has the necessary experience and local knowledge to continue delivering the services. He had also developed excellent working relationships with the council and their employees, and objectively was a prime candidate to continue delivering these services. However, the client had previously submitted his own tender for a previous round and had been rejected because his experience, capabilities, and sufficient resource/plant had not been conveyed satisfactorily in his writing. The client was therefore understandably anxious regarding the process and following interviews and ongoing communicate with our writers was satisfied that they would accurately and succinctly demonstrate their capabilities within the remit of the method statements.
As the lot-specific questions focussed on ability to provide services in those geographic locations, the writer conducted in-depth research regarding known locations likely to become blocked and used map images in the responses to demonstrate the routes operatives would follow. Furthermore, and to evidence the client’s abilities, photographs were taken from their social media account and used within the responses.
Responses then went through our internal quality management processes including review by our quality reviewer, John Winder, and adjustments made by the writer to strengthen the responses based on feedback. The client then had over two weeks to review the responses, providing written feedback which was then incorporated. The client was extremely happy with the final version, and as he was working on site the majority of the time, we also handled the portal upload and submission on his behalf.
Outcome
We submitted this tender in October 2021 and found out in November 2021 that they had been successful on not only their incumbent location, but across all lots tendered for, receiving full marks across the quality questions. The client has since expressed his thanks and we hope everything goes well.