Tender for a contract

 

Submitting a tender is common for businesses activity product or services to other businesses or the public sector.

At a basic level you expect to quote for a job or write a letter saying why you must be given the business.

 

But a lot of formal tenders usually apply to bigger jobs or for supply contracts spread over time. Public-sector work in explicit has specific tendering processes. this is applicable to customers ranging from your local government or hospital to a central government department.

 

Even if you do not win the work this point, writing a tender will clarify your aims, strengths and weaknesses and you'll learn for next time by inquiring for feedback on your bid. It raises your profile with the client and helps you study customers' wants.

This guide explains the way to establish potential contracts, what to incorporate in your tender and the way to write it for the most effective likelihood of success.

Finding out regarding contracts

 

You can determine regarding private-sector contracts through:

 

• building contacts with potential customers

 

• Advertisements in local and national newspapers

 

• Advertisements in trade and professional magazines covering your space of business

 

• researching contracts outside your business which can turn out secondary contracts for you, e.g. if a new office building is constructed, it'll want desks, carpets, signage, stationery, cleansing and laundry

 

 

• Following up press and alternative reports - an organization is also increasing or subcontracting a part of a giant order

 

• Networking and reading info from alternative businesses

• You will identify public-sector contracts by:

 

• following up contract notices revealed in newspapers and trade magazines

 

• monitoring on-line government tender notices. See the factsheet marketing to governments.

Should you bid for a tender?

Preparing tenders will assist you to win huge orders, however it may also be time-consuming, value money and tie up valuable resources. If you do not get the contract, the money and time spent is typically lost, therefore you would like to carefully weigh up whether or not a tender is worth bidding for.

Key points to think about

• Get hold of the bid documents and analyse them.

• Make sure you'll match the technical, ability and skill needs.

• How much can it value to arrange your bid?

• Would the work fit in together with your strategy and positioning of your business?

• Estimate the prices of fulfilling the contract and whether or not you'd build enough money to justify it.

• Assess however the contract would have an effect on your alternative work, staffing and skill to take on alternative new business.

You also have to be compelled to take into account how vital the client is to your business. is that this an honest potential shopper or one you do not need to offend by not tendering? Attempt to perceive things from the client's point of view.

 

Find out what the client desires

In order to achieve a clearer understanding of a possible client's needs, see if you'll organize a gathering or have a conversation with them, before you begin work on the tender. You must invariably raise queries by phone or email if tender documents are unclear - on something from deadlines to however you'd get paid.

Make sure the client is serious, which you are not there to form up the numbers or to check the market. Generally customers may be fishing for concepts they're going to then use for themselves. You’ll prevent this from happening by requesting customers to sign a non-disclosure agreement before presenting your tender. However remember many consumers genuinely need you to form an inspired contribution and supply concepts.

 

What to place in your tender

Make sure you match the bid specification and answer all the queries.

Summarise your bid and justify why it answers the client's wants. Write this last however place it at the start of your tender.

 

Crucial rules for your tender document

• Focus on the shopper - refer their wants and the way you'll solve their issues. After you pen yourself, it's to prove you have got the talents, expertise and organisation to fulfil the client's needs.

• Help the client by coming up with concepts - from other ways of doing things to the way to tackle attainable worries regarding future maintenance and staffing implications.

• If the shopper has provided a qualification document, ensure that you simply cover everything in the document.

• Value for money and not price alone decides most bids. Bring one thing to the work that cannot be done by the client or your competitors. Emphasise business advantages, service enhancements, risk reduction, low maintenance, quality, dependability, previous satisfied customers, lifetime costs, etc.

• Analyse all the cost and rating factors of the contract. Do not ignore fixed prices like wages for employees who can be working on something else.

• Consider the chance that bound info filed in association to a tender can be subject to revelation under the Act respecting access to documents control by public bodies and also the protection of private info.

• Contract management - show you have got the resources to try and do the add an economical thanks to meet the client's wants, hit deadlines and respond flexibly to changing situations.

• Show you've got considered - and might manage - potential money, business and legal risks that might cause contract failure.

• Give details of your team. Emphasise strengths - CVs ought to highlight successes with similar projects as well as qualifications and skill.

 

Writing your tender

Once you've got set to bid, you'll have to come to a decision how you will manage the bid:

• Who gathers info and will research?

• Who co-ordinates all the material you need?

• Who writes the drafts?

• Who checks them?

• How can the remainder of your firm's work get done?

A good place to begin is to create a listing of all the queries you'd raise if an organization was submitting a tender to provide a product or service to you.

Clients can expect you to:

• state the aim and origin of the bid

• summarise your work as a contractor, past experience and credentials for this job

• say how you will do the work, and the way and once the client's aims will be achieved

• explain the advantages and money for cash of your bid

• detail once and the way goods and services are to be delivered, and provide a timetable

• demonstrate your team's skills, expertise of comparable work and their responsibilities if you win the contract

• explain however you may manage the project

• give details of your pricing and any medical aid arrangements inside the price

• be sensible and determine potential issues while not promising what is clearly not possible for you to deliver

Include a cover letter that responds to the bid invite, summarises your main message and explains however the documents are organized.

You should even be aware that info from your tender could also be disclosed within the future below the Act respecting access to documents control by public bodies and therefore the protection of private info. this provides anyone, together with your competitors, the final right to check info control by public authorities - including the information in your tender.

 

Tips on writing your tender

It is well worth spending it slow looking at the presentation of your tender. Here are some recommendations on editing and supplying your tender:

• Keep sentences and paragraphs short, punchy and businesslike.

• Use bullet points and headings to interrupt up text.

• Decide on a typeface, layout and type size - not too small - and continue them.

• Make sure everything is standardised. are CVs all given within the same way?

• Be careful once cutting and pasting copy to create sure the format stays constant.

• Make sure you've got developed a logical argument which everything hangs together.

• Read everything once more. Then get a colleague to browse it - for which means, typewriting mistakes and omissions.

• Use appendices for supporting further info.

• Produce a front cover with the project title, date, name of the organisation requesting the tender, which of your own firm.

• Include a contents page.

• Number paragraphs and provide a contents page thus material are often simply located.

• Consider obtaining it written and certain professionally.

Above all, ensure the tender is delivered on time - it's unlikely that organisations can take into account your tender if it arrives after the deadline. you will need to deliver it yourself, by hand, to confirm it arrives safely. or else, contact the organisation to check they have received it.