Why? Because they won’t do it!

We were told repeatedly to ‘read the question’ at school. I have always repeated that advice to my Foundation exam students. I even remind myself to do it. And still we get answers wrong because we haven’t fully answered the question. In the bids we review, my experience is that some questions go unanswered by the authors on every bid.

In fact, the Senior Procurement officer for Central Government agrees. He once said that the biggest reason that bidders lose marks is that they do not fully answer the questions asked. So, something is going wrong at a fundamental level.

Generally, all SMEs know they have to answer the question. They also know they should read the question in detail. So just reminding them to do it does not change anything. Instead, we need a process that enables it to be done effectively. Bid management needs to ensure the contributors have read the question and must take action where there is missing information in the response.

I think there are three steps to achieve this:

You may well be asking yourself ‘What’s so special about all that?’ And I’d agree with you. It isn’t special. It’s really simple, but if it is done it makes a massive difference to the bid because you won’t lose points for ‘not answering the question’.

I’ve been doing this deconstruction and checking process on most bids I’ve been involved in for several years. This is because it filled a gap in our client’s processes. Typically, we found 5% of the questions would have gone unanswered. These clients won over £500m worth of contracts in the last two years. And who knows? Maybe they wouldn’t have been so successful if we hadn’t fixed those missing questions. The full magazine can be accessed at https://bidsolutions.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/BQ18-Pages-Final-250224.pdf It is full of useful bidding guidance.  If you would like to chat over how all or any this may affect you and your business, please give us a call at any time for a no-obligation chat.

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Andy and Peter were asked to take part in a panel discussion on this topic for APMG (the examination board for APMP Certification). For those of you that are interested, or know of anyone interested in starting out on a career in bidding, here is a link to Episode 226 – Level Up your Career – How to Become a bid and Proposal Professional in 2024 (Part 1)

Episode 226 – Level Up your Career – How to Become a bid and Proposal Professional in 2024 part 1.

If you are involved in the decision of how to structure your multi-organisational team for a strategic bid e.g. as a prime, sub-contract, consortium etc., you need to watch out.  Recent court cases have shown “Here may be Dragons” for the less well informed! Bevan Brittan (a Procurement Law specialist) has helpfully summarised two recent court decisions which may alter your view on how to proceed.  It advises that although there are several ways in which you may team to bid for a Public Sector opportunity, the choice of how to structure your bidding entity may come back to bite you at the end of the process.

In esssence if you are a sub-contractor, you will not have the right to challenge the outcome of a dodgy procurement.  If you create a Special Purpose Vehicle to bid, you will then be limited in the types of losses you can claim.  These cases suggest that if you expect to put a lot of work into a bid and want to retain the power to challenge, you need to be the prime or in a consortium.

The full article is at https://www.bevanbrittan.com/insights/articles/2024/lessons-for-bidders-in-public-procurement-sub-contracting-and-joint-ventures/.  I have tried to summarise it in these two paragraphs to help you get the gist, but I recommend you read it if the topic is of interest to you.

Happy bidding!!

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Public sector contracts are a lucrative business. You may not win many at first but this will change with experience in leveraging the systems and processes to gain competitive advantage. More doors will open as you become known.

For over 20 years we have helped people bid into the public sector but it is the most frustrating (and often non-intuitive) area of bidding to work in with strict and well-defined rules. Both procurement and bidders work hard to get around these rules and if they do, their competitors try to find out how and take them to court for doing so. If the court finds no wrongdoing, everyone builds their own workaround to circumvent the rules in future bids.

Then procurement teams change the requirements. Bids should NOT be all about providing quality goods and services the public sector needs; they must support the latest ecology, quality and social engineering agendas which make the buying department (or local politician) look good (e.g. eye-catching support for disadvantaged communities, numbers of wildlife rehoused, etc).

So you refocus your business strategy to keep up and face another challenging hurdle – word limited responses to heavily worded questions. The responses in a recent multi-million pound public sector bid were limited to 600 words (difficult but manageable) – but several questions were 300 words and one was 400! At least all bidders had to contend with the same restrictions.

From my experience, the biggest and most successful public sector bidders have dedicated public sector sales teams, with bidding support focused on these types of bids. They understand the many nuances of competing in this field; many have their own well developed bidding tools and processes. They choose from a selection of strategies developed to best meet the latest requirement. Interestingly, the majority seem to value APMP accreditation, even if they do not specify it when they are recruiting or use the APMP methodology internally.

But some provide bid support as a central resource (not sales-integrated). This can be a problem if bean-counters in some multinational HQ decide costs are too high and cuts are needed. They see bids as just another project, and assume the Project Managers already in place will be able to run their bids with support from SMEs in the business. No need for overpriced bid managers/teams!

In our business, we love it when this happens. The client’s bid performance crashes and we are asked to help put it right. We establish a public sector bid team inside the sales function, fully integrating its activities into the communication plan for each qualified opportunity.

So what’s my advice to a company wanting to get into winning public sector contracts? Entry barriers are significant and going after public sector contracts is not a business decision to be taken lightly.

For small contracts, you may get the impression the ‘playing field’ is not level and buyers’ personal agendas are followed at the expense of fair competition. Legal redress for any procurement or bidding shenanigans is unlikely; it’s just too expensive (though the threat of going to court can sometimes sort an issue). Your best protection is to strictly follow the precise rules, requirements and constraints of the ITT. Do not embellish the responses or add in text which is not absolutely relevant to the exam questions set. Only address what the procurement team ask and show you are meeting their needs, not selling what you have. They will be unable to drop you from the competition as a result of a minor non-compliance.

For big contracts, following the rules is not enough. You have to ‘game’ the entire system or you will be wiped out by a competitor. Of course, you need a sound, credible, adequately described solution to remain in the competition – though this is probably not where the final decision will be based.

Someone in your team will need to review the reporting requirements to uncover biases or weaknesses. Start with the price reporting template and create a pricing and solution design strategy that will exploit any weaknesses (e.g. when you know the activities or services to be priced against will be different from what is actually required). Find the people in your organisation who are good at this type of analysis, put them to work and give them a pay rise – it will be worth it!

Next, work out how every section of your response addresses each point in the scoring system, dealing directly with the points which will generate maximum marks. The scoring system may contain vague and unquantifiable tests, e.g. “excellent levels of proof” or “delivers the highest confidence”, so play these words back to the evaluators in the leading and final words of your response.

Finally, let it be known that you will not accept any impropriety in the competition. Make it clear that you will robustly challenge any selection decision which is not entirely justified.

My two top recommendations for all contracts are:

1. Critically review and score the written response from the evaluator’s perspective prior to submission. Try to understand their approach to scoring your work and the rules they must follow. This will provide a benchmark for investigation if your internal score is very different from the evaluator’s.
2. Do NOT use AI to generate text. AI is limited, it cannot innovate and is fairly easy to spot. The client wants innovation and your brain is the best tool for the job.

Go on, have a go! You may be one contract away from a brand new sportscar and a holiday home in Tenerife.

This article was written by Andy Haigh .

Andy is an expert in bidding and tendering, specialising in competitive formal bids into EU Public Sector organisations. He is an authority on EU procurement legislation and can bring all these capabilities together to initiate and drive major complex bids through to a successful completion.

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The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Reusing High Scoring Bid Content

You have to get a bid in against a looming deadline.  Four high-scoring questions are covering Social Value.  This is an area in which your company excels.  Your boss gives you some responses to a previous bid which the evaluators scored very highly.  “Easy-peasy.” she says, “Just use these and put together the responses.”.

This is a real situation which I ran into on a client’s recent bid.  The bid was strategically important.  Timescales and resources were tight.  I was the solution to the client’s problem!

I had a look at the “Good” responses.  They were all well written and had a good balance of solution and assurance.

The “How” question responses were laid out with clear descriptions of the steps in the proposed process and the associated timelines.  The individuals responsible, the metrics, reporting processes and an outline of how things would be put right if they go wrong, were all included.  There were several references in each part of the response labelling where the business had done this before.  Testimonials supported and the successes they claimed.  A one-page, “feel good” case study completed the response.  No wonder the evaluators liked them!

However, then reality kicked in.  Each of these “Good” responses were 12 pages long.  However, the page limit in my bid was 4 pages per question.  When I broke down the question elements in each of my bid’s requirements, I discovered that I had 28 to 30 specific points in each question I must address!  That is about 7 elements per page.  One short paragraph per point.  In each requirement, several of these points were of the form “How will you …”.  My list of “How” elements now looked uncomfortably long.

The next problem was that the specific questions asked in the previous bid’s Invitation to Tender document were not the same as in my bid.  They were similar in that they covered the same main topic areas.  However, many of the question elements were new or different.  What “in Heck’s name” should I do now?  A lie down in a darkened room beckoned.

So, here comes the roll of the dice.  I think I had three options.  In this situation and if I had ample time, I would choose the Good solution:

1. Lay out each of the individual and specific points which needed a response, in the order of the client’s question, in table form.
2. Using the client’s question structure as main headings, create a sensible heading structure for the response from the tabled points.  This needs to be worked to fit the allowable pages when the heading structure is fully populated.  Better still, allocate space or word counts to each heading.  This will make it even easier when you are writing.
3. Carefully go through the “Good” responses and extract the text that best fits against each point in the table.  Add this to the table against the particular point.  An exact fit against the question is not needed, only that the specific point in the new question is reasonably well covered.
4. Start writing against the specific topic in the heading using the “Good” response text as guidance (or lift it directly if it fits).  Rigorously exclude any word, phrase or sentence which does not directly address the specific description in the heading.  Then, revise the text until the word count or space limit is achieved.
5. Either write the response text missing from the “Good” response yourself or (better still) find an appropriate expert to write it.  Again, rigorously exclude any word, phrase or sentence which does not directly answer the specific description in the heading.  Keep revising the text until the word count or space limit is achieved.
6. When the response is complete, leave it for 24 hours and then read it through again.  If it is still too long, consider deleting some specific responses (and risk ignoring a client’s question element).  Choose bits of the response which will have the least impact upon the overall solution you are proposing.  Keep revising the text until the word count or space limit is achieved.

Of course, this all takes time.  If time is tight, you may just want to carefully read the “Good” response, create a heading structure from your client’s question and then begin writing.  Your recent review of a good response should permeate your thinking and your new text?  I would label this as a Bad solution.   Of course, the underlying story and flow which made the “Good” responses so good will be difficult to reproduce.  It, also, relies upon your own expertise in the subject and your knowledge of the Social Value achievements made by your business.

The Ugly solution is to take the previous work and just cut it down to fit the page limit.  On the basis that the original text scores well and that it covers the main area of the question, it should work?  Plus, this has the advantage that your boss will see you have done what you were told.  You have used the “Good” text.  Another plus is that when the scores come back as very poor, you can avoid much of the personal responsibility for the score.  After all, the boss told you what to do and a previous evaluator scored it very highly!

Which did I use for my bid and did it score highly?  Contact us if you would like the answer!  Either way, we hope the considerations above will help you navigate your own scenario.

You may not be aware that you have a new resource available to you.