Background
Our waste management client is a market leader with considerable expertise and excellent coverage in its area of operation. A lack of tendering resource however meant that it had lost opportunities to win contracts in its own right and often operated as a sub-contractor providing services via another company.
Challenges
We needed to develop an effective bid management strategy that enabled key individuals from the company’s different operational departments to be assigned reactively to individual tender opportunities.
A further concern was that not all tenders were being identified by our client thus creating a real risk of missing out on the opportunity to bid all together.
Implementation
To address the issue regarding the sourcing and identification of tenders during Summer 2016 we supported the client in a project to centralise all tender alerts and enable effective assessment and management of them. Lines of communication were established and expectations set so that upon identification of a potential tender opportunity, information was communicated to the right people and a bid/no-bid decision could be made.
For tenders of average scale and value we provided our standard tender writing services. For the larger tenders Tender Victory provided bid management and tender writing services. This combined service treated each tender as a project identifying responsibilities, milestones, and deadlines.
At the outset of each tender a project team was formed, meetings were scheduled to co-ordinate with the team’s existing operationally demanding workloads, and assignment of content and drafting responsibilities took place. Initial project meetings, at which the timescales and project plans were agreed, ensured that all project members were engaged in the tender process and were aware of the project plan and their own individual responsibilities within it.
Result
Our waste client has now won tenders as a prime contractor where previously it had often been working as a sub-contractor. By deploying bid management and tender writing services we were able to engage key individuals in the tender process and ensure that they provided critical information and details, which were then included in winning tender responses. As we also provided services to centralise the monitoring of tender opportunities, we have ensured that their scope for tender alerts is correct meaning that the company has also been able to bid for, and win, tenders that it may not previously have been aware of.
Summary
As a prime contractor the company is able to deliver real added value to its clients through close contract management, not previously possible as a sub-contractor. Its customers report that they are happy with the services being provided which supports the extension of contracts and future bids through the glowing references they receive.