Bringing Experience to Life

Most bids go no further than setting out experience as a series of summaries and tables on the lines described above. This form of treatment can document your record in comparable work, but it does not show how you would put that experience to use in the proposed contract. What you should be communicating to the client is 'We have fulfilled similar requirements for other clients; here is how we helped them resolve similar problems and issues, and this is how our experience can benefit you too'.

Why not use project summaries as the framework for a more structured argument? For instance, your understanding of the contract may point to key issues that need to be faced or critical activities that have to be undertaken. Use the project experience part of the bid to explain how you approached those issues or activities in other contracts, the challenges or difficulties you overcame, what similarities and differences you expect to meet in the proposed work and how your contract experience has equipped you to define the most direct means of achieving the client's objectives. In short, don't leave clients to draw their own conclusions about the relevance and value of your experience: make the point yourself, directly and convincingly.

A section developed in this way might have two main components:

• information about comparable work, drawn from the material referred to earlier;

• a narrative pointing to the closeness of match between the requirements of the proposed contract and the results achieved in your previous and current assignments.

The example overleaf shows one style in which this material might be structured. When project summaries are dull and uninteresting - as is the case all too often - they are likely to be ineffectual. They earn their place in the bid only if they focus attention on the quality of your expertise and the distinctive value of your services. The best way to improve their presentation is to rewrite them to bring out the demanding or unusual features of the contract, the difference that your services made and your success in helping to resolve the client's problems.

Improving road safety, restoring the environment and moving underground utility lines are three technical challenges that the proposed contract shares with the A365 Improvement Scheme completed earlier this year for the Department of Roads. Our responsibilities included engineering design and construction supervision of a 30-km section giving drivers a safer and smoother road surface on one of the region's busiest stretches of dual carriageway. Three of our team members played a key part in the scheme:

• John Brown, nominated as Project Manager, fulfilled the same role on the A365 scheme, overcoming problems caused by unfavourable weather in the early part of the construction period. His project supervision task was made all the more demanding by the need to keep traffic moving during the roadworks. Nonetheless the work was completed substantially ahead of target and within the contract price.

• Jane Smith, Environmental Planner in our team, coordinated 100 volunteers in an ecological rescue operation to remove rare species of plants growing in areas at risk from the roadworks and to replant them in secure habitats. She also developed and supervised an extensive programme of screen planting, landscaping and hedgerow replacement.

• David Jones, nominated as Senior Utilities Engineer, had the task of locating and recording underground service ducts and utility cables and programming their diversion well ahead of construction. One of the problems he had to address was the fact that not all the utility authorities had exact information about where utilities were sited.

In the four months since the A365 Improvement opened, the number of reported accidents on this section of road fell to 40 per cent of the total for the corresponding period last year, despite a 12 per cent increase in traffic flows. The Department of Roads attributes a major part of the success of the scheme to the quality of our road design and the efficiency of our project management procedures.

These resources are benefits that we can apply in meeting the tight deadline of the proposed assignment, dealing with the complex pattern of services and utilities along the route of the highway, safeguarding its natural environment and developing a road scheme that will succeed in saving lives.