Chapter 24: Do Your Own Tender Auditing

Using Feedback From Clients

Whatever its outcome, the tendering process is incomplete without an effort to understand the reasons for success or failure. If the tender was subject to public procurement rules and you were unsuccessful, you are normally entitled to ask the contracting authority to explain the grounds on which your bid failed and to indicate the advantages offered by the winning bid. The authority may decline to give this information if it judges that to do so would be prejudicial to the public interest or the maintenance of free competition.

Clients are sometimes helpful enough to volunteer information on why a bid has failed. Where they do not, make it your business to obtain feedback from them and encourage them to be frank in their assessment. There is no need to be apologetic about approaching them on this point, and clients ought not to react defensively: if your bid was technically deficient in some respect or fell short of the required standard, it is important for you to know the reasons so that you can redress the problem on a future occasion. Most clients will respect this as a professionally responsible attitude and recognize that it is in their own interests to encourage more efficient and competitive tenders.

Without this information you may be unable to analyse correctly the factors that have worked to your favour or disadvantage in particular sectors of the market. The analysis may involve criticism when a tender is lost, but its intention should be constructive not accusatory. Look on it as a positive exercise to improve the quality and force of your bids and draw lessons that can improve your response to future opportunities.

Learning from success and failure

Learn both from the bids that take you through to negotiation and from those that do not, and use the information to reinforce your tendering skills. Perhaps a key factor that brought success was your awareness of the complexity of a problem or willingness to tackle difficult issues; perhaps it was the innovative nature of your approach, the structure of the work programme, your ideas on managing the project, the competitive level of your price or the emphasis you placed on the quality of working relationships that convinced the client that you could provide the best results. These are winning elements you will want to develop further in other bids.

If the structure of your tender seemed unclear, the experience of your team inadequate or your level of costs too high, you need to reflect on your approach to bid development and put matters right. If you failed to appreciate the scale of the required technical commitment or the impression you conveyed at an interview was poor, you will wish not to repeat those mistakes. It is the bids that do not result in contracts that have the most to teach you: a bid can be said to have failed only when you learnt no lessons from its development.