About Tendering

Risk Assurance

Contracting authorities require risk assurance from any company they work with. This is both in terms of finances and insurance, but also includes experience and capacity. How can you best assure the contracting authority that you are able to fulfil their requirement, that you have done it successfully before, are able to evidence this, and how can you promote this to ensure it fits to the requirements?

Competition

Let’s take ‘experience’ as an example. As noted above, this is essential in providing the contracting authority with risk assurance. But risk assurance is not enough. You are likely to be competing against another 20-30 other tendering companies. How can you ensure that your tender response stands out and crucially will score those ‘top quartile’ marks available? There will be other companies with similar experience so providing the ‘correct’ information is then essential. This could mean emphasising not just the core service, but for example performance measures and KPI’s (from previous contracts), your approach to engaging and consulting stakeholders, how you have effectively managed health and safety when working within public areas etc.

Innovation

This then leads us into innovation. Contracting authorities often reserve the highest points to those who have offered innovation within their response, or within specific sections. They should note this within their weightings section of the document but even if they do not we believe this can on most occasions lead to achieving those required higher marks, which increase your chances of being shortlisted. Depending on the stage you are at this could be something you have already carried out during another contract or a proposal of a different way of servicing the contract or an aspect of it. A new or different type of technology is an example, as long as you are still meeting the specification.