By Jason Cooney, Director, The Tender Team, Li
Factor 1: What type of help you need and how much of it?
Different clients have different demands and requirements, and we tailor our service to each of them. For example, you may be hands-on in the tender management process or have an office coordinator or some other person in your team who will project manage the process. If that is the case you will more than likely only need pure tender writing service.
If you have a comprehensive understanding of your market and have win themes and strategies in mind, then you may not need any guidance there either.
On the other hand, some clients have never tendered before or are so busy with existing bids and tenders or other day-work that they simply don’t have the time. In this case, if we need to project manage the bid and also work with you to workshop your win themes and overall strategy, we (and most bid and tender writers) charge more given the additional time involved.
Sometimes, given the nature of bids and tenders, and regardless of if it is a construction, infrastructure, medical or other tender, there is more work in project managing the bid and tender writing process than there is in actually writing the responses.
Factor 2: How complex and sophisticated the RFT or RFP documents are
Requests for tender vary in nature and depend on the procurement documentation the individual entity adopts. For example, Cold Coast City Council generally uses the same type of RFP document with similar questions irrespective of the nature of the services that are to be provided. Other Councils and government departments, use more complex procurement documentation when the purchase value is above a certain amount.
Where there is a detailed scope of works, requests to comply with certain policies and technical documentation, as well as an evaluation criteria that isn’t clearly written, the tender documentation becomes more complex. This makes it more time consuming to complete the tender and we charge more for these types of tenders.
Factor 3: What type of additional documents and compliance is required?
Compliance is generally part of every tender or bid and has an impact on what you need to do to submit a compliant bid. Sometimes, they require ISO certification, or other procedures, plans and insurance certificates. You may need to write a modern slavery statement or review your work health and safety and quality assurance plans to ensure they comp with requirements. For some construction tenders, and other bids (for example, cleaning bids), you will need to create specialised safety documents that are designed for the specific project.
Compliance takes time and it is helpful if you have existing templates although they do need to be tailored to each individual tender or project sometimes. The level of work required to ensure you comply with the tender requirement impacts the total costs we charge for a tender or bid.
Factor 4: Your bid library or the extent of your existing content
Writing your first tender is completely different to writing your tenth or 20th tender or bid. If you have written many bids, you will generally have existing content which can be used as a base and adapted to future questions. You will more than likely have pre-written CVs, case studies and other content which can be tailored, and this generally speeds up the process.
Furthermore, certificates of currency for insurance and other documentation are generally well organised and you will have been through the whole proceed before. Our tender writers will always speak with key subject matter experts when writing your bid and tailor our responses to the opportunity. However, however some base content certainly helps speed up the process and results in your overall fee being lower. Therefore, tender writers, like us here at The Tender Team generally charge less for bids and tenders where you have existing content from previous similar tenders.
Factor 5: The level, experience and description of the tender writer
Here at The Tender Team, when we are working off hourly rates, we have two levels, tender writer and bid manager. Most tender and bid writers charge more if they are more experienced and also if there is more responsibility. For example, being a pure tender writer generally has less responsibility than managing an entire bid. Some tender and bid writers are booked up in advance and clients often engage us to help them with a tender or bid before it has even been released.
We usually charge based on level of experience and also specialisation in a particular industry. For example, a tender or bid writer may have fifteen years experience in tenders and bids but only one year experience writing medical tenders. Another writer may have five years experience in tenders and bids with all those five years writing medical tenders.
When we are working on a bid, we always allocated to tender writer with the most relevant experience to work on the bid.
Why our clients choose The Tender Team and why our fees are fair and reasonable
At The Tender Team, we are committed to providing value and position our fees in the middle of the market. We are not the cheapest, nor the most expensive tender writing consultancy in Australia. We help businesses of all shapes and sizes including small businesses bidding for their first local Council tender, to large corporations looking to secure national and multinational bids. Generally speaking, our clients choose us because:
- They get a professional polished tender response and ensure they give the individual bid their absolute best shot.
- When they calculate the opportunity cost of time spent on the business, it works out cheaper to hire a processional like us.
- We leave you with a bid library and a previous tender with CVs and case studies for use in future tenders should you chose to complete them in house.
Case Study – How we helped a client prepare a tender for the first time for a local Council for a fixed fee of $5000.
Description: We were approached by a businesses in Perth who manufactured and installed playground equipment. They mostly completed private work and this was their first government tender. They were ISO accredited which was great, and they had some decent systems and processes in place. It was their first time tendering and they hadn’t completed any government work in the past. They were on a reasonable budget and wanted a tender response that they could use as a basis for future tenders.
Challenge: We reviewed the tender and were thinking of charging between 4000 and 7000 on first review. Once we took a look at our client’s content, we noticed that they had some well organised and prepared CVs which we would need to tailor, as well as a robust ISO Certified Integrated Management Plan. We needed to understand what existing content could be used, what we would need to write and how much work was involved overall. Our fees cover the full scope of the tender and it was a start to finish service – so once we provided a fixed price we include everything from strategy to submission.
Solution and outcome: We were able to use the existing ISO documentation and arrange for the client to develop a tailored SWMS and JSA which was required for the tender. We then accounted for the time to tweak the CVs without writing them from scratch, as well as tailor a number of the existing case studies so that they would better suit the government sector. From our original upper estimate of 7000 we were able to complete the tender for $5,000 + GST for the client without compromising quality. It was a winning tender submission and our clients was excited about the outcome.
For help with your next bid or tender give our team a call on 0410 448 770 or email us at info@thetenderteam.com.au
