Chapter 11: Thinking the Work Through


Overview

Your analysis of the bid specification will have given you an insight into the client's view of the contract and the results the work is intended to achieve. Does that mean you can now confidently start writing the text of the bid? Well, no. There is a further piece of analysis to undertake, which can be described as thinking the work through - trying to form as clear an idea as you can at this stage about the resources you will need to put into the work to carry it forward to a successful conclusion, and the steps that can be taken on your part to reduce the risk of things going wrong. By looking ahead, you will make life easier and go at least some way toward avoiding unpleasant surprises. That sounds obvious, yet bids sometimes show little or no indication that anyone has applied their minds to understanding just what the contract will entail. What the client then receives is an idealized picture of how the work might be done, closer to fantasy than to reality.

Before you can produce a bid that the client will find convincing, you need to think about the following aspects of the contract:

  • the practical demands of fulfilling it to the satisfaction of the client;

  • the relationship between its technical and financial elements;

  • the factors that might put at risk its performance and delivery;

  • the means of reducing the risk of contract failure.




Bids, Tenders and Proposals. Winning Business Through Best Practice
Bids, Tenders and Proposals: Winning Business through Best Practice (Bids, Tenders & Proposals: Winning Business Through Best)
ISBN: 0749454202
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 145
Authors: Harold Lewis

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