Chapter 21: Producing and Submitting the Bid

Every seasoned bid writer will recall emergencies when it seemed touch and go whether the bid would ever see the light of day let alone the client's office. Missing the deadline means losing the contract, no matter how good the bid. If only for this reason, try not to leave things until the last minute. Problems and glitches may occur, but you can minimize the damage if you plan and think ahead. Make sure every part of the production process is covered, from the safe back-up of files to maintenance checks on copiers and other equipment.

Electronic Submission

Clients may require or permit bids to be submitted electronically as well as in written form. This point will normally be made clear in the bid specification. Electronic procurement is steadily gaining ground in the public sector; the EC Communication on Public Procurement (March 1998) set a target of having 25 per cent of all public procurement in EU member countries handled electronically by 2003. The wider use of electronic media will be reflected in the delivery of pre-qualification documents and tenders as well as through the publication of standardized contract documentation via the Internet. Within Europe, national legislation is being amended to permit the submission of tenders other than in writing. For instance, the Utilities Contracts (Amendment) Regulations 2001 allow this option provided that the means of submission enables each tender to contain all the information needed for its evaluation, maintains the confidentiality of tenders pending their evaluation and enables tenders to be opened only after the time limit for their submission has expired. Where an electronic submission is allowed, an authority is able to require either that the submission of the tender is confirmed in writing or that a hard copy of the tender is delivered to it in person or by post, in either case as soon as possible after the submission of the electronic version.

In some cases, bidders may be asked to submit, electronically, data such as detailed cost information, which would otherwise have to be keyed manually into the client's computer system, and to produce the rest of the bid as hard copy. Check whether the format for electronic documents is indicated in the bid specification; generally it will be MS Word, though clients may ask for a PDF document.

If it is your own idea to submit material electronically, confirm that this is acceptable to the client. In preparing the material there are key practical considerations to bear in mind:

• Because of issues of resolution, the page size for a screen-based document will be smaller than for a printed document. Though the person viewing the bid on the screen will be able to scroll vertically and horizontally and zoom in and out, it will not be so comfortable or convenient to read as a paper copy, and it will be less easy to maintain a sense of where one is in the document.

• To accommodate the needs of clients who may be using older displays, it is advisable to adopt a design basis that enables a page to be viewed in its entirety on a standard VGA resolution display (640 480 pixels) without recourse to a zoom facility.

• Electronic documentation imposes constraints on the text area, typography and inclusion of graphic objects. For good legibility, it is advisable to leave at least 45 per cent of the screen page as white space. Two-column layouts may cause problems. The most readable font is a sans serif typeface such as Helvetica, Gill Sans or Arial, with an average size of 12 point for body text. At certain screen resolutions and settings, a bold face may not appear bold, and the screen display may be limited to 16 colours. If your bids normally include your corporate logo on each page, the size of the file will become hugely inflated.

• Apply a minimum of formatting and use tables not tabs.

• Flow charts, spreadsheets and forms may be unwieldy to read, particularly if they extend to numerous rows and columns spanning more than one page. Unless you have carefully thought through the design of a worksheet, printing it from a file may give the client more work than you would wish.

• Preview the electronic version before sending it to the client, so that you have if necessary the chance to correct errors in spacing, formatting and page breaks.

In short, supplying an electronic version is not just a matter of scanning the bid into a computer. You are likely to have to design the document twice - once for a conventional hard copy and again for its electronic counterpart. And even where you do provide both, the client will probably find the one on paper more useful when it comes to examining and evaluating the bid.