Six Top Tips For Managing a Large Tender Submission

This informal CPD article, ‘Six Top Tips For Managing a Large Tender Submission’, was provided by Executive Compass, who provide bid management and bid writer services assisting owner-managed businesses, SMEs and large multi-national companies to win public and private sector contracts.

A large tender submission is likely to crop up at some point in your bidding journey. Public sector bid submissions can vary greatly in size. Whilst some quality elements can be as little as 1,000 words, others can be 50,000 words or even more – particularly if the contract is split into lots and you are bidding for multiple workstreams.

Read the tender documents and understand the requirements

Your first port of call should be to read and understand the invitation to tender, or ‘ITT’ document and contract specification, which will outline the following:

• Contractual scope of works, including geographic areas, contract term and contract-specific KPIs
• Mandatory minimum requirements to submit an eligible bid, such as minimum turnover levels or industry certifications/accreditations
• Quality standards and specified materials which outline exactly what you are required to use for the contract’s works or services
• Requirements for the submission outlining which documents need to be returned – typically, this will include a quality element, pricing schedules and a host of company information documents.

Information from the above should inform your ‘bid/no-bid’ decision, and ensure you are confident in your capability to deliver against all elements of the contract. This is particularly relevant for a large tender submission – you do not weeks of hard work to go to waste for a submission you have no realistic chance of winning.

Create a project-specific bid plan

Make careful note of the deadline, and ensure you have sufficient resource to complete all elements of the bid in advance of the submission. This allows you to break down a large tender submission into smaller parts and milestones – which will feel a lot more manageable!

Each document should have a task owner and internal deadline for completion. Keeping a close eye on timescales and project progress in a large tender submission ensures everything is on track to submit in advance of the deadline, avoiding the stress of a last-minute submission:

• Documents to be returned as part of the submission, and whether any appendices or attachments are required
• Progress of quality responses, including whether they have been drafted, reviewed, edited and proofread
• Task owner for each response or document to ensure nothing is missed out and everyone is aware of their responsibility for the bid.

Although writing is the most time-intensive element of the bid, there are normally other documents which must be completed, such as the Standard Selection Questionnaire and ‘sign and return’ documents. Make sure these are completed early to avoid a rush to submit, which could result in an admin mistake or missed document.

Ensure contingency measures are in place

Sometimes, a large tender submission will lag behind the initial plan due to anything from illness, to clarifications issued by the buyer, or simply a challenging quality question set.

When this happens, the issue should be raised immediately with the team working on the bid. They can then put additional contingency measures in place – for example, by assigning additional resource to non-quality elements of the submission, reducing the administrative burden. Suitable contingency measures will allow you to take a proactive approach to managing risk inherent to large tender submissions.

Schedule time to discuss with subject matter experts

Bid writing pairs persuasive, evidence-based content with in-depth technical knowledge from subject matter experts. To avoid large gaps in information and content in quality responses, you should:

• Reach out early to subject matter experts in your organisation to schedule the information-gathering and discuss questions, as many are frequently on site or in the field during the day
• Emphasise the benefits of a technical approach, making it easy for the evaluator to award marks to your response and making your tender stand out from other bidders
• If necessary, get them to review finalised content for a ‘sense check’ to ensure the content is accurately presented.

Remember, the evaluation committee are often not technical experts. A tender response should have a suitably strong grasp of industry knowledge, but should also be laid out in layman’s terms, ensuring it is approachable and easy to interpret.

Implement strong quality assurance checks 

The quality review process is crucial to any tender submission. All tender responses should be subject to a review by a suitably senior member of your team – either a bid professional or contract manager – to ensure the strongest possible submission.

The quality assurance checks for tender responses should include:

• Ensuring the response is compliant with the requirements of the contract specification, key performance indicators and the invitation to tender document
• Checking all aspects of the question have been addressed and content is written in the correct tense, such as ‘we will’ for a future-focused question
• Including persuasive, evidence-based content within responses, focusing on the ‘why’ rather than just ‘what’ and ‘how’ you will deliver works or services
• Content is presented in a clear, professional and compelling manner, using bullet points, colour, company logos and tables where appropriate.

For large tender submissions particularly, it is important that the quality review process takes place well in advance of the deadline. This will allow you to make improvements to the first draft of content and avoid any last-minute changes – particularly if a response is off the mark.

Final Check

Following amendments during the quality assurance checks, there should be one final check of all documents and uploads to the portal to make sure you are ready to click submit. This crucial step avoids any administrative or uploading errors spoiling weeks of hard work from your bid team.

 Check the requirements of the submission from the beginning of the project to verify:

• All standard company information has been entered correctly and financial information, such as copies of accounts, is included
• Quality responses are correctly formatted and adhere to word or page limits – some portals require you to copy and paste responses into a textbox
• ‘Sign and return’ documents have been completed by someone appropriately senior (e.g. managing director) – these sometimes require your own company’s letterhead as well!
• Any appendices and attachments have been correctly titled and are uploaded to the correct location.

Once you have mastered a large tender submission, you are ready to introduce it into your standard bid management practices – enabling you to win more contracts and expand your client base into the public sector.

We hope this article was helpful. For more information from Executive Compass, please visit their CPD Member Directory page. Alternatively, you can go to the CPD Industry Hubs for more articles, courses and events relevant to your Continuing Professional Development requirements.