About our Wollongong Tender Writing Team
Our team of bid and tender writers include two bid writers based in Wollongong. With an understanding of the local economy, demographic and social issues, our writers are well placed to assist companies to bid for tenders and bids in Wollongong. In addition, with the help of our NSW and interstate team members, we help Wollongong based businesses win contracts across NSW and Australia.
Our bid writing team has helped many local Wollongong based companies win bids and tenders over the years. We have also assisted business across the Eurobodalla Coast and Saphire Coast to write winning tenders and secure government contracts.
Since 2015, we have been helping local businesses write and win bids and proposals, and we are still committed to this aim ten years later.
Local Government Tenders in Wollongong and the Shoalhaven Region
Being based in Wollongong, we help a lot of local businesses and businesses on the NSW South Coast write bids and tenders to local government. These include the City of Wollongong, Shoalhaven City Council and Eurobodalla Shire Council. As a result, we have a strong understanding of what Councils are looking for an the manner in which they procure goods and services. Most of the time, City of Wollongong use a similar procurement document no matter what the tender is. You generally need to provide similar WHS, Quality and Environmental documentation. However, there are always specific questions related to the service itself and your response needs to be tailored and concise.
Irrespective of the Council or State Government department you are bidding for, you need to submit a highly localised bid. This is a significant advantage for local Wollongong businesses as you can showcase a more comprehensive local employment and social development strategy and commitment.
Two key strategies to win Wollongong City Council and other local Council tenders
Strategy 1: Focus on being local. You need to personalise your bid and focus on being a local provider. This is critical for local Council tenders. If you are based in the Wollongong City Council area and are bidding for a contract in the Shoalhaven City Council area, talk about any parts of your operations that are in the Shoalhaven Council Area such as suppliers, employees or apprentices. When you are bidding for a contract, Council is also concerned about the downstream economic benefits of the contract. For example, if you are a local electrician:
- Do you employ local apprentices?
- Will you purchase from local suppliers and do you support any local charities?
- Do your children attend the local high school?
These are all important points to talk about to demonstrate how engaging your business will result in profits and other benefits flowing back into the local community.
Giving your bid a local feel and flavour is critical to being successful in tenders in Wollongong and across the NSW South Coast region.
Strategy 2: Prove you can take care of the admin and reporting side. It is important to know with Council tenders and contracts there is a large amount of reporting and administration for the contract. For some of our first time tenderers, they are not aware of this. In addition, you need to submit all the required WHS and Quality Assurance documentation.
You need to show the reader that you are a systems backed business that has the expertise and experience to administer the contract. More often than not, they will be confident you can provide the service – but will want to know that you are experienced servicing government.
Strategy 3: Write a clear and concise bid without any unnecessary marketing information. In our experience, the City of Wollongong procurement teams don’t like to read a whole lot of general text. They like bullet points, structured text and concise language. You need to quantify everything you write and provide as much evidence as possible for all your claims. It’s fine to write a lot of text if it is relevant and concise. If not, keep it short and sweet.
Private sector, state and federal government tenders for Wollongong businesses
We have helped many Wollongong based companies over the years from law firms to transport companies in Wollongong and the wider Shoalhaven Region to bid for state and federal government contracts, grants as well as private sector contracts.
Wollongong is a dynamic city with a strong business community. A key point, we find, which resonates well with the Federal Government and the Private sector is it’s location. If you are bidding for a contract which requires in person meetings at their offices, and they have offices in Sydney and Melbourne, then you can commit to this free of charge. This ensures you mitigate any concern regarding locality.
Furthermore, Wollongong brings many employment and other advantages that larger cities do not provide and more regional and smaller cities cannot offer. For example, increased employee retention, lower office rental rates and other prices driving down costs, and a well qualified pool of resources are all points worth putting forward for Wollongong based business that are applicable in 2024 and beyond.
Strategies that we employ to help Wollongong based businesses bid for Federal, State and private sector contracts include:
- Focus on your national offering and presence. This applies for example to delivering a cleaning contract or security services to Government properties across Australia. If you are bidding to provide services to one Government building in Wollongong, then a localised approach is fine. However, if you are headquartered in Wollongong but have a national presence and are bidding to provide services across the Country, you need to showcase your national presence and capability and talk about and evidence your capability to service regional and remote areas.
- Integrate graphics and infographics: This also applies to Council tenders to some extent if the RFP documents are not too prescriptive. Your bid or tender needs to be well presented and professional. Where you are proposing solutions that are complex, you can summarise these in a graphic or infographic. The colour scheme and overall ‘theme’ of your bid needs to align with your website and general brand.
“Jason and the team assisted us with an urgent must-win tender to City of Wollongong. We were impressed with how much work went into the bid and how they knew the City’s values and strategic plan inside out. They aligned our bid to this plan, included a whole lot of local information and initiatives we never would have thought of including, and submitted a quality response.”
Brent Smith – Local business owner
The services our team of tender and bid writing consultants in Wollongong provide
We help with the various components of bid and proposal writing including:
Bid/No Bid decision – this is critical as it’s important to make sure you allocate your resources appropriately and go for the right opportunities. Putting a submission together is a complex task and costs time and money. Therefore, it’s important to only go for realistic opportunities where you have the right expertise and experience to win the contract.
Supporting documentation – for most Government and private tenders you need to provide a lot of supporting documentation. This can include Work Health and Safety, Quality Assurance and Environmental Statement. The tender may ask for Aboriginal inclusion policies and other documentation. We have the templates in place to create this documentation quickly and efficiently.
Writing your proposal or tender – When we write we write with flair. We go into detail, structure responses and adopt a persuasive writing style. We clearly and concisely communicate your key points of difference, and ensure a professional, polished document is submitted.
Our service is round the clock. That means that if you are struggling under the weight of a large RFT with a deadline looming, we can come in and assist. Alternatively, we can get involved in the early stages of the proposal process and project manage the bid from start to finish. Our team of tender writers in Wollongong will add value by either coaching you through the process and explaining what your business needs to do to comply, or by improving your existing material and taking it to the next level.
Our experience and track record helping Wollongong businesses in contracts
Our tender and bids experience extends across a range of industries including:
- Defence: We have helped clients based in Wollongong write bids for contracts with the Department of Defence and other Defence agencies. These include for defence industry contracts as well as other contracts such as the provision of stationary supplies and learning programs.
- Legal, recruitment and professional services: We are pleased to have helped Wollongong placed law firms and other professional services firms write bids to the NSW State Government and local Councils as well as insurance companies.
- Civil infrastructure: Including for the construction of roads, highways and remediation works. We have also helped Wollongong based civil-infrastructure companies with bids on PPP projects as well as major government and private sector infrastructure and construction projects in Wollongong and the surrounding area.
- Medical and healthcare: We have helped write equipment supply tenders in the medical industry as well as bids for allied healthcare tenders. Our team has also helped local GPs bid for contacts for the operation of medical centres.
- Manufacturing, mining and steelworks.
- Smallgoods.
- Construction and maintenance: Including helping electricians, plumbers, fire maintenance companies and building maintenance companies to bid for contracts with strata companies as well as the local government.
- Hospitality and catering.
Case Study 1: Wollongong Medical Practice:
Our client was a medical practice based in Wollongong that was tendering for a government medical contract. The purpose of the contract was to provide out of hours medical services to a hospital as part of their emergency response services. Our client had a strong local presence and brand in the marketing. However, given they were a private practice, they had limited internal documentation procedures, quality assurance documentation and policies. They also had limited to no experience with practice management software.
We worked with them to set up all their policies and procedures from scratch, implement practice management software and write and submit the tender. The client had limited time to assist with the preparation of the bid. We took on a lot of the writing as well as project management of the tender. We worked closely with the entire team, including key doctors, to gather testimonials and put forward a comprehensive bid which is successful.
Case Study 2: Helping a local concreting company bid for a major contract with a Tier 1 contractor
Our client was a Wollongong based concreter who had been in the market for over thirty years. It was a family business with a very good reputation in the local market and strong experience working directly with Tier 2 construction companies. However, our client was invited to tender to a Tier 1 construction company to provide works on a major infrastructure project. Being a NSW Government infrastructure project, there were significant documentation requirements required by the Tier-1 builder, as a result of being a sub-contractor.
We worked closely with our client to develop the necessary safety documentation they didn’t have in place. In addition, our client required assistance with contract advice – as they were very cautious dealing with a Tier-1 contractor for the first time, and didn’t want to misquote anything or have any liability. We have no expertise in this area, however, we referred our client to another consultancy who had extensive expertise and we worked closely with all parties to submit the bid. Finally, our client was asked for profiles, licenses, and other requirements which our client had in place but some of which they haven’t developed yet. We took photos of their team members, wrote up fresh profiles, and provided a number of other key documents that were required to submit the bid. The tender was successful and lead to a substantial flow of work for our client from 2021 – 2024 and we will continue to service them into 2025.
Chat with our team
For help with your next tender in Wollongong or if you are a Wollongong based business looking for assistance to respond to an RFP or RFQ, contact our Director on 0410 448 770 or email info@thetenderteam.com.au
