Guidelines for Association

There are key guidelines to follow if you want to achieve a successful basis for association:

• Don't have more associates than you really need. For clients, the best team is one that is no bigger than necessary to meet their requirements.

• Choose them carefully. They need to be compatible with your approach to the bid, with the client's management culture and with each other. On the face of it, units or departments within the same company or contracting group should make ideal partners, but that will only be the case if they can work productively as a team.

• Identify the roles that each associate will play in preparing the bid, in any subsequent negotiations and in fulfilling the contract, including the extent of your responsibilities for particular deliverables. You need to avoid the risk of things not being done because it is assumed someone else is looking after them.

• Get all parties to agree on the principle of sharing the costs of bid preparation and negotiation and the detailed basis on which costs will be divided. Do this at the start to avoid unpleasant surprises later! Normally these costs are split in proportion to the share of total fee income that each participant expects to receive from the contract.

• Draft a letter of agreement or memorandum of understanding setting down these points as well as defining the form of the association. The agreement can be developed into a more formal document if the bid is successful. Have it signed by an authorized representative of each participant. Contracting authorities will normally want you to include a copy of the agreement in the bid.

So far as the form of association is concerned, you may have a variety of options, from bringing in freelancers who undertake contract work as subconsultants to establishing a formally constituted joint venture partnership with its members sharing joint and several liability. Procurement rules generally do not require you to set up the association in a particular legal form.

The best advice is to avoid anything that involves corporate legal and financial obligations such as a joint venture, unless you intend to commit yourself to a long-term relationship with the other members and are confident that they possess the resources to share in any liabilities that may arise. Choose instead either to manage the work on a subcontract basis, where you control the services of your associates, or set up an informal association or consortium in which each party maintains its normal trading obligations but has clearly defined and understood professional responsibilities as part of the team. To set up a joint venture at the bid stage is premature: it is better to proceed on the basis of a memorandum of understanding until a call to interview or negotiation is received.

Size of association

Unless there is a clear logical relationship between the character of a group, the scope of work and the complexity of the contract, try not to have groups of more than four or five parties. Multiple associations can succeed if they are integrated through sensible and efficient management and a common approach, and if everyone gives the contract an appropriate degree of priority. But a consortium of, say, seven firms can easily translate into a team of 30 or more professionals. The people evaluating the bid may doubt the control and manageability of a team that will have to be answerable to so many head offices as well as accountable to the client, and they are likely to focus on the increased resource and administrative costs that a large group will entail, as well as the increased scope for disagreement and misunderstanding. It is in your interests to keep the group compact and to define a transparently clear structure of management (Chapter 14).

Choosing associates

The best associates will generally be people you know or people recommended to you by reliable contacts in your profession. There are many attributes that make an effective partner, including complementarity of skills and experience; but the essential requirement is to have a shared understanding of professional responsibility and a commitment to performance and delivery that will extend beyond the bid and into the contract. You need associates who are prepared to roll up their sleeves and invest the time and effort to achieve a winning result.

Remember that in developing the work schedule you may not be able to change and adjust the time inputs of your associates as easily as you can the inputs of your own personnel. Associates with other professional commitments may have narrow margins of availability.

Do not misuse professional relationships by enlisting specialists and advisers into your team, using their names to help win the contract and then pruning down their inputs (or reducing their fee rates) unilaterally when it comes to negotiating a price with the client. Keep your associates informed about the progress of the bid, and tell them about the outcome. To leave people in suspense, uncertain whether the month or so they have offered to you will actually turn out to be a month of income, is not conducive to good relationships.