Planning and Coordination

Defining management and writing responsibilities

Bids fall flat and get out of control when it is uncertain who is supposed to be managing what or writing what. Defining these responsibilities clearly and rapidly is an essential first step. In the majority of firms, bid writing is a task undertaken by technical experts or senior managers, while promotional material, CVs and so forth, are produced and maintained by technical or secretarial staff. Some firms bring in specialist writers and consultants to mastermind bids and facilitate the production of technical input. Others may have no system at all either for managing the necessary resources or for allocating bid responsibilities: in some cases, the work of preparing a bid will be given to any staff member who happens to be around or has downtime between contracts - not a recipe for success.

In large contracting organizations, bid skills are often recognized as a specialist resource supplied by staff who spend most of their time writing and developing bids. A multi-skill firm may support a group of bid specialists sufficiently versed in the technical background of its activity to be able to draft sections of text and edit material from other experts and senior managers. They may also have the job of keeping promotional material, CVs and project records up to date and fine-tuning this material to the requirements of each bid. This type of unit is found most commonly in firms where large-scale contracts tend to overlap divisional boundaries, though an aversion to central overheads has reduced its incidence.

One proviso that has to be made about using bid-writing specialists is the need for them to keep in touch with the practical realities of managing projects and the challenges of meeting deadlines, especially in difficult work environments. If bid writers grow isolated from the day-to-day mechanics of contracts, they risk making poor judgements about time schedules and staff inputs, which can put in jeopardy both the professional results of the assignment and its financial outcome. The bid writer has a responsibility to be realistic about what can be achieved in the time available. Bid writing should alternate with project work, and practical experience needs to be fed back into bids.

The use of a bid manager provides the structured approach required by businesses that have to deal with a continual flow of invitations to tender. Bid management may be a full-time job or a role taken by the person best suited to match the particular requirements of each bid - for example, the proposed team leader or project director, or the individual who knows most about the technical demands of the work. The bid manager may serve the firm as a whole or one or more of its constituent parts: his or her time may be devoted exclusively to bids, pre-qualification documents and marketing activities or it may include participation in project work. Precisely how the responsibilities of bid management are best handled is a matter that each firm has to determine for itself.

The bid manager's role has three main priorities:

• driving the work forward and ensuring that input is developed on time and to the required standard;

• coordinating the structure, content and presentation of the bid;

• applying the document management controls needed to produce an efficient business offer.

Figure 8.1 lists the key responsibilities the job may entail, covering the structure and content of the bid as well as its administration and production. Checking the text for internal consistency is an essential management function; otherwise there is a risk that the content of one section of the bid may be altered without realizing the effects of the change on other parts of the document. The bid manager should take personal responsibility for seeing that the bid is free of careless errors. Acting as a referee or arbitrator between different technical viewpoints and resolving competing pressures on the time of people asked to contribute material to the bid are further tasks that an experienced bid manager can usefully perform.

Figure 8.1: Bid Management Responsibilities

Bid planning meeting

If a team is developing the bid, it should meet regularly to report progress, discuss issues and exchange ideas. Its work should start with a bid planning meeting, held as soon as practicable after the decision has been taken to submit a bid. The purpose of the meeting is to ensure that everyone who is available to contribute ideas and experience has the opportunity to do so, as well as helping to assess the best approach to the bid and the inputs required for its development. In some contexts this meeting would be called a 'brainstorming' session - a term that needs to be thought about, since the consequence of a storm can sometimes be a washout.

Copies of client documentation and related information should be circulated in advance to those taking part. Points that can usefully be discussed at this meeting include:

• the programme for developing, writing, editing and producing the bid;

• special requirements arising from the bid specification and instructions to tenderers;

• the bid team structure and options for association or partnership;

• writing and editing responsibilities;

• arrangements for visits and meetings with the client, if appropriate;

• pointers from marketing research and other background information;

• the format and structure of the bid;

• strategies for the bid approach;

• preparation and coordination of CVs, project experience summaries and other basic material;

• style and presentation of inputs to the text;

• design ideas for the bid;

• basic cost and pricing assumptions for the financial information in the bid.

Document management controls

Define at the start the form in which input files are to be structured, titled and maintained. This is a matter of employing basic document management procedures that will allow you to track changes and revisions and apply version control as successive drafts are produced. You must be able to distinguish immediately the latest version of any part of the text from superseded versions. The latter may be saved on your system - and on occasion you may need to retrieve them - but you cannot afford to misidentify them or to get them out of sequence when the text is being edited since failure to reflect changes can destroy the consistency of the bid (Chapter 12). These considerations are particularly important when the text has an intricate structure or if it is being produced as a joint effort by teams of people working simultaneously and remotely - for example in offices located in different time zones.

Other things being equal, the best procedure is to group batches of related files in specific folders or sub-directories and identify text files with their section in the bid, using an unambiguous naming convention. At the end of each working day update and back-up a protected and controlled text that consolidates the latest versions of the various parts of the bid. The use of this text in the quality management of the bid is discussed below. Take advantage of the reviewing and change-tracking options offered by your word-processing application and try to ensure that everyone helping to compile the bid knows how to use the comment and annotation functions in Word or PDF files.

If other companies or external advisers are providing input, encourage them to supply material in a format consistent with the requirements set by the client and with your preferences. Before people start to write their contributions, give them guidance on the style you want them to follow and the points to observe.

Programming production and delivery

The bid should be treated as an internal project that needs to have resources made available and critical tasks scheduled. The same project management techniques that apply to contracts can be used to coordinate the management of bids. MS Project is the most widely used of many project management applications that the bid manager can employ to help assign resources, schedule tasks, track progress and avoid production delays, as well as developing the contract work programme. The printouts from project management software present information through a range of graphics that can be used to reinforce an image of business competence.

Even a simple chart of the bid production schedule can be useful in keeping track of the progress you are making, judging if the pace of work on the bid needs to be boosted and developing a realistic programme to meet the submission deadline with time in hand. The time that is allotted to production and the time discounted from the schedule to allow for delivery must include adequate contingency margins.