Chapter 1: A Bid to Succeed

About this Book

If you are engaged in professional services, consultancy or research, you will find guidance here on every step in the process of writing tenders for contracts and project funding. The book puts at your disposal techniques that the author has perfected as a specialist writer in this field and insights gained from his experience as a tender evaluator with client organizations in the public and private sectors. Those who are new to bid writing will learn how to build the confidence to start producing successful bids. Those who are more experienced will, it is hoped, be shown new ideas that extend and reinforce their skills.

The scope of the book includes a broad range of procurement and funding. The text aims to deal comprehensively with its subject matter, but it does not cover tendering for supplies or works contracts or 'design, build and operate' schemes and similar contracts. Much of the material will be relevant to public-private partnerships, though procurement issues related specifically to these initiatives are not addressed directly in the book.

This introductory section is followed by chapters highlighting aspects of bidding in three broad environments - public sector procurement, particularly within the EU framework (Chapter 2), contracts for private sector clients (Chapter 3) and applications for research funding (Chapter 4). Pre-qualification procedures are the subject of Chapter 5. The process is then traced out step-by-step from the decision to put in a bid (Chapter 6) through the task of managing its preparation and development to the construction of the text (Chapters 7 to 12). The categories of information normally included in a bid, from technical analyses to cost estimates, are discussed in Chapters 13 to 20. The concluding sections (Chapters 21 to 25) follow the bid through the stages of submission and evaluation as well as outlining a procedure to assist in the continuous improvement of bid quality.

The techniques described in the book are within the reach of everyone, whether firms of contractors or individuals working on their own: they can be put to use in bidding for small projects as much as large contracts, in writing short proposals as much as multi-volume tenders. Chapter 12 contains a complete bid - a letter of just a few pages - as a practical and small-scale example of the approach set out in the book.

There is a point of definition to be made at the outset. Though the type of document that is the subject of this book - a formal written offer to undertake work or provide services for a stated price - is called a tender in services procurement, consultants are more likely to refer to it as a proposal or bid, while research bodies may talk about an application for funding. Since the book is relevant to all these fields, the words 'bid' and 'tender' are used here without distinction as inclusive and generic terms. Similarly the term 'contractor' denotes any person or organization putting in a bid, whatever their background. The bidding process from tender announcement to contract award is summarized diagrammatically in Figure 1.1, which indicates also the types of document that may be associated with each stage.

Figure 1.1: Generalized Summary of Bidding Process

In most sectors of procurement, competitive bidding is the norm for all except small, low-value and low-risk assignments. Single sourcing is generally considered acceptable only if the work is a logical extension of a previous or existing contract and continuity is required, or if only one contractor is qualified to undertake the work, or if a contract has to be awarded quickly in an emergency. But even in these situations it makes good sense for the client to ask the contractor for what is to all intents and purposes a bid, stating how the work will be performed, when it will be completed, what the deliverables will be and what the work will cost.