Chapter 12: Developing and Writing the Bid

Overview

Clients by and large prefer to receive bids that are concise, businesslike and succinct - which means relatively short. It's the quality of the bid that counts, not the quantity of paper. Bid specifications are often explicit about the need for brevity, and it is a requirement that has to be taken seriously. Clients may try to force contractors to keep things brief by imposing limits on the size of the bid (eg 'no more than six to eight A4 pages, presented in one-and-a-half-line spacing') and on the number of pages that can be devoted to particular categories of information.

These limits help clients apply a consistent approach in assessing the adequacy of the contractor's response, and they contain within manageable proportions the work of examining and evaluating bids. They can be useful also to bidders, by making them concentrate on the essentials of what they have to offer and deterring them from spending undue amounts of time and other resources on overweight presentations.

Where you are faced with tight limits, the best approach is to:

• draft the content of the bid in a way that responds fully but concisely to the client's requirements for information, keeping the limits in mind;

• build the text around the key points that communicate your strengths and suitability for the contract and that answer the client's evaluation criteria;

• compare your text to the space available;

• if necessary, pare it down by summarizing the less essential material.