Sapphire Utility Solutions

In 2020, Sapphire Utility Solutions (SUS) wanted to grow quickly into larger, more complex contracts but struggled to resource a dedicated bid team. By partnering with Thornton & Lowe for both Bid Writing and Bid Admin, they are now able to draw on the expertise of our team of bidding professionals, bringing best practice from many different industries.

Through our support, Sapphire is now able to access a fully embedded, full-time business development service that sources opportunities, manages the bidding process and ensures long-term success on high-value frameworks.

Client story

When Sapphire Utility Solutions first engaged Thornton & Lowe in early 2020, they were a growing regional contractor with a strong track record across utilities and several council contracts. They could see significant potential in larger frameworks and national programmes, but needed to create a scalable, expert team in order to better manage the peaks and troughs of bidding activity.

Initially, Sapphire contacted Thornton & Lowe for bid writing support. As our relationship developed, it became clear that there were additional opportunities for Thornton & Lowe to support the company’s growth. In particular, one such issue was the day-to-day management of opportunities, portals, and bid administration. The internal team were stretched, and senior leaders were spending too much time on bid admin tasks.

Key objectives

• Grow the business beyond its regional base into larger, higher-value contracts and expand nationally to win key contracts across the country

• Expand specific service lines, including traffic management

• Maintain and build on Sapphire’s strong safety and compliance record

• Achieve all this without the cost of building a full internal bid department

How Thornton & Lowe delivers Bid Administration for Sapphire

To meet their growth goals, Sapphire chose to outsource Bid Administration to Thornton & Lowe rather than building an internal team.

Since 2020, they have engaged our Bid Administration service to provide seamless support, with our Bid Administration Lead Emma McCarroll fully embedded in the company’s business development structure. This gives Sapphire the benefits of a consistent, long-term resource without having to recruit and manage administrative personnel.

Our service in practice

The Bid Administration service we provide for Sapphire is wide-ranging, and designed to lift as much of the burden as possible from the internal team. They include:

• Managing the Business Development inbox
  Monitoring, distributing and triaging all incoming bid related emails and notifications.

• Daily opportunity searching
  Identifying new tenders each day and providing concise overviews to decision-makers so they can quickly decide what to pursue.

• Cross-team liaison
  Coordinating inputs between operations, commercial, finance and leadership to keep bids moving and to gather the right details.

• Content and boilerplate management for PQQs and tenders
  Maintaining content libraries and standard responses, so high-quality material is always ready to use.

• End-to-end portal administration
  Managing and maintaining around 90 bid portals, including registrations, compliance checks, clarification questions, document uploads and final submissions.

• Tracking and reporting
  Producing live trackers and reports, ensuring Sapphire has a real-time view of pipeline, deadlines and outcomes.

• Onboarding and supplier responses
  Completing pre-qualification and onboarding processes where Sapphire needs to be registered as a supplier or subcontractor.

• General business development and Bid Admin support
  Undertaking wider bid and BD admin tasks that would otherwise need to be completed by operational or leadership staff.

Together with Thornton & Lowe’s bid writers, this creates a ‘one-stop-shop’ outsourced bid function, from identifying opportunities through to submission and post award activity.

Bid writing for high-value and complex utilities bids

Alongside the bid administration relationship with Sapphire Utility Solutions, we have built and maintained a large bid writing team that effectively acts as their bid function. After starting with project-based work, Sapphire moved to a strategic partnership model and fully outsourced their bid management team to Thornton & Lowe, giving them a dedicated group of specialist writers and managers focused on their pipeline.

Our bid team follows a structured training package to ensure that they fully understand Sapphire’s markets, service lines and buyers. This enables us to handle a high volume of bids without sacrificing quality. This includes:

• Core utility frameworks

• Local authority contracts

• Group-wide opportunities

The content itself is often highly technical, covering complex industries and sub-sectors, such as works and maintenance contracts, innovation and technology projects, and civil engineering schemes. This is where the expertise and versatility of the Thornton & Lowe team make a real difference. Our bid writers have a breadth of experience supporting clients across more than 120 sectors.

To aid the process for a busy operational team, we use a storyboard led approach. For each major submission, we:

• Agree a clear structure, win themes and evidence requirements up-front

• Use focused interviews and workshops with subject matter experts to get the appropriate level of detail

• Ensure that our answers are tightly aligned to the question and evaluation criteria

If a response doesn’t provide enough detail about outcomes, is unclear for a non-specialist evaluator, or doesn’t answer the full scope of the question, our team will seek further clarification, evidence or alternative examples. By taking a ‘critical friend’ approach, we convert this operational detail into clear, buyer-focused narratives that score well.

Because Sapphire’s bids span regions and regulated markets, detailed research is built into the writing process. The team routinely reviews regional business plans, local authority strategies and sector specific regulatory targets, then weaves this context into the responses. This might include referencing local priorities, planned investment programmes or performance measures, helping the bids feel specific to the buyer.

All of this sits within a tailored bid management process designed around Sapphire’s way of working. We have developed a bespoke tracker, meeting rhythm and review structure that links bid writing, technical leads and senior sign off. Working closely with the outsourced admin function and Search & Selection service, the writing team can focus on content while colleagues manage portals, documentation and opportunity tracking, creating a seamless end to end process for high value and complex bids.

Impact and results

Through our partnership, Thornton & Lowe have written more than 120 bids for Sapphire, including complex, multi-stage submissions.

In doing so, we’ve helped Sapphire to move from a primarily regional focus to winning places on major frameworks and other large contracts. Examples of this success include:

• Long-term utilities frameworks, such as multi-year AMP8 programmes, with contract values reaching into the tens of millions
• Ongoing wins at council level, maintaining and expanding Sapphire’s local authority footprint

Building a new business area: traffic management

Meanwhile, one of Sapphire’s key ambitions was to grow their traffic management business. With structured opportunity searching and full bid support in place, Sapphire has gone from submitting one or two bids per year to multiple TM bids at one time, with notable recent wins including:

• A £3 million per annum, 8-year contract for traffic management in the Thames Valley region of Thames Water's operational area
• Contracts with local authorities such as Kirklees Council and Solihull Council

Support across the wider group

Since Sapphire’s acquisition by Lanes Group, Thornton & Lowe’s Bid Administration services have been extended across the broader group. This has included:

• Winning multi-lot frameworks such as Northumbrian Water Tankering
• Supporting a successful bid for Yorkshire Water Wastewater R&M, worth hundreds of millions over the life of the framework

Further benefits

Beyond the contract wins, the positives of Thornton & Lowe’s work with Sapphire have been numerous. This includes:

• Managing around 90 portals, ensuring timely, accurate and compliant submissions
• Freeing up senior leadership to focus on strategy, operations and client relationships
• Providing a single point of contact who deeply understands Sapphire’s business, culture and systems

For Sapphire, Thornton & Lowe’s Bid Admin services mean better use of leadership time, smoother internal coordination and stronger bidding.

Want to achieve the same results?

Sapphire’s story shows how choosing Thornton & Lowe for outsourced Bid Admin services can help you to reach ambitious growth targets. With us by your side, you can:

• Grow without building an internal bid department
• Create a single, consistent approach to bids
• Scale into new service lines or regions
• Free up senior leaders’ time

If you’d like to explore how an embedded Bid Administration function could work for your organisation, simply get in touch with Thornton & Lowe today. We’ll tailor our proposal to your size, sector and future plans, helping you to achieve your goals.