Tim Moore, Economics Director at IHS Markit, which compiles the survey, notes [via CIPS<\/a>]:<\/p>\n Construction companies took another stride along the path to recovery in July as a rebound in-house building helped to deliver the strongest overall growth across the sector for nearly five years. Civil engineering and commercial activity are also back in expansion, which has been mainly due to the restart of work that had been delayed during the second quarter of 2020.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Couple this with the fact that the\u00a0National Infrastructure and Construction procurement pipeline<\/a>, updated in June, includes 340 procurement contracts across over 260 projects, programmes and other investments and sets out procurements with an estimated contract value of up to \u00a337 billion over the next year\u00a0within the construction sector.<\/a><\/p>\n As procurement consultants in the construction space, we are seeing that it\u2019s even more important in the current climate to have fully defined bidding processes and well executed tender responses.<\/p>\n As competition increases, the scoring criteria for new bids is becoming even more important and tailoring your bid responses to the specific needs of the potential client is essential. It\u2019s no longer an option to churn out the same response each time, so taking time to plan out bid responses to ensure that they are better than competitors and writing tender responses that deliver exactly what the client is asking for, is the key to winning new contracts.<\/p>\n Well, it\u2019s all about planning and process. Broadly speaking it breaks down into 4 key stages: research, planning, delivery, and review and revise.<\/p>\n If you’d like to talk to us more about how to plan out winning bids in construction, visit our bid strategy<\/a> page.<\/p>\n It may be that until now, your tender responses have been poorly planned, or perhaps not tailored to the client\u2019s specific requirements. Maybe you lack the internal resources to dedicate the time to analysing the requirements and drafting your strongest possible response.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s see if we can help to break it down and look at those key stages in more detail\u2026.<\/p>\n Research is all about finding the right opportunity and analysing your suitability.<\/strong> We tend to work collaboratively with internal teams on the client\u2019s side to score against the following characteristics:<\/p>\n Once the \u2018opportunity analysis\u2019 is completed, it is easier to determine some key elements to include within the response to give the client a better chance of winning or in some cases. It will also help identify opportunities that are not a good fit and perhaps the client should not pursue.<\/p>\n Once the ITT is available, we would run the analysis again to identify if the situation has improved or worsened.<\/p>\n Planning<\/strong><\/a> starts with needs analysis:<\/strong><\/p>\n \u2026 and then in planning<\/a> we proceed to \u2018win themes\u2019. Once we understand the actual needs from the groups identified in the needs analysis, we can develop three compelling win themes.<\/p>\n Each win theme will be:<\/p>\n For example: <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018Partnership\/quality\/local office\u2019\u00a0are NOT win themes.<\/p>\n \u2018We will save\u00a0you 40% on your initial CapEx with an estimated 20% OpEx saving per year thereafter\u2019\u00a0IS a win theme.<\/p>\n Although we refer to \u2018win themes\u2019 this is more of a \u2018promise\u2019 from the bidder to the customer.<\/p>\n To simply test the win theme, imagine if the Commissioning Manager speaks with the CEO at the coffee machine, the CEO asks, \u201cWhy did you choose [Bidder A]?\u201d The answer will never be \u201cpartnership working\u201d, it\u2019s far more likely to be related to firm deliverables or promises of improved service and cost savings.<\/p>\n Delivery<\/strong> starts with solution design<\/strong> Think back to the needs analysis and ensure that this is entirely customer focussed. Standard boilerplate company organisation structures are not the answer here. Bidders should include both customer and the client on their chart, by individual\u2019s name if possible.<\/p>\n Make it clear and simple: roles and responsibilities should be easily understood, and you should use it to describe how the win themes (or promises) are going to be achieved.<\/p>\n Rather than going straight into drafting the tender response, we plan out the key sections using storyboarding. This falls into 2 key parts:<\/p>\n Once you have done this you ask the final signoff authority to agree to the structure and content. When we do the final review, it will be reviewed against the storyboard. This avoids last minute additions, direction changes and amendments (wasting time!).<\/p>\n The final strategic stage will be allocation of the responses and creation of a review timetable. We always ask that you have an internal team review of the first drafts.<\/p>\n For what is usually the primary focus, bid writing<\/a> now becomes the most straightforward. This is just the completion of the responses against the storyboard. This is wordsmithing of storyboards that have already been clearly planned and populated with information, themes, evidence and the solution.<\/p>\n The review <\/a><\/strong>phase should be collaborative and provide meaningful feedback. Review the final responses and give direct (and helpful) feedback to the authors; remember, we are reviewing against the agreed Storyboards.<\/p>\n Check to see<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.exceeding.co.uk\/bidding\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/construction_.png\")
<\/p>\nSo how can construction companies ensure that they secure some of these new contracts? <\/em><\/h2>\n
What makes a good bid response?<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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Let’s look at what you might be doing wrong and how to fix it<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\nEven before the ITT documents arrive, we recommend that you analyse the strengths and weaknesses of each opportunity. This is the start of your bid strategy<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.exceeding.co.uk\/bidding\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/Opportunity-910x512.png\")
<\/p>\n\n
\n<\/em>a)<\/strong> Who are the stakeholders, influencers and who is making the decision to award?
\nb)<\/strong> Who is the ultimate decision maker (the economic buyers that control the budget)?
\nc)<\/strong> Who is running the procurement and what rules and processes must we follow?(Although a personal relationship is favourable, if we know who the individuals are, we can profile through research).<\/li>\n\n
\nHow is the bidder going to deliver the win themes? This could be an organisation structure showing the governance, relationships, reporting, innovation forms etc. What form will it take?<\/p>\nAnd then at eXceeding we would move on to Storyboarding<\/strong><\/h5>\n
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\n<\/em>Create a standard template that meets every aspect of the scoring criteria. If the evaluation criteria states \u201cto get 5 points you must demonstrate value add and innovation\u201d make sure there is a section for \u2018value add\/innovation\u2019 for each response. Also include \u2018evidence\u2019 for each response and make sure it fits specifically with the question.<\/li>\n
\n<\/em>When part 1 is completed we work with the Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) and lead them in filling in (bullet form) the key points that need to be articulated for each section within each response.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\nNow we\u2019re ready to write the response<\/strong><\/h5>\n
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All that\u2019s left to do is to present and handover!<\/strong><\/h5>\n