Helping you win Maintenance and Facilities Management Tenders

At The Tender Team, our writers are committed to helping our clients win maintenance and facilities management tenders. Our team of maintenance and facilities management bid writers:

• Bring over 46 years combined experience writing facilities management and maintenance bids across Australia.
• Have in-house experience writing bids and tenders for Tier 1 and Tier 2 facilities management companies. 
• Are government (and private sector experts) with experience writing bids to local government, state, federal government and defence.  
• Are highly responsive, polished and professional. We can project manage large facilities maintenance bids that extend across multiple states.  

The types of tenders and bids our team of tender writers will assist with

Our team has helped clients win a broad range of maintenance contracts for tender and facilities management contracts for tender. We are experts in writing winning facility management tenders and facilities maintenance contracts and also have experience helping our clients write building maintenance tenders. Our track record includes helping businesses large and small such as property and infrastructure owners, facilities management companies, builders and building maintenance companies, specialist trades such as electricians, plumbers and fire maintenance, and engineering and IT services companies for maintenance tenders associated with mining and data centres.

• Mining: Our team has helped a broad range of mining services providers write bids and tenders to mining companies for maintenance services. These range from simple cleaning and facilities management and maintenance to the maintenance of vehicles, trucks and other mining equipment. Regardless of the service type, when bidding to the mining sector – reliability is key. Any downtime is costly and our team work closely with our clients to put forward compelling proposals that demonstrate their skillsets, as well as their depth of resources and ability to consistent provide a costly service. This is what helps our client win mining maintenance contracts.
• Infrastructure and engineering: We have written maintenance and facilities maintenance proposals to provide maintenance services to large infrastructure projects. From tunnels to bridges and airports, our writers understand how to put together complex facilities maintenance proposals that showcase a team of maintenance engineers and other personnel and their respective abilities. We know the importance of talking about the total life cost of a project and will work with you to develop well presented graphics and infographics that clearly articulate your maintenance plans. We write to win and help you put together quality proposals that meet and exceed the mandatory criteria. Having worked on bids and tenders for large PPP infrastructure projects, we understand the projects and what it takes to win. We leverage on this experience to work with you to create a compelling submission. The types of infrastructure maintenance contacts we have worked on over the years include:
  • Road maintenance tenders including highway and local road maintenance.
  • Rail infrastructure maintenance tenders including track maintenance. signal maintenance and rolling stock maintenance.
  • Water infrastructure maintenance tenders including water treatment plant maintenance, distribution network maintenance and sewerage system maintenance.
  • Energy infrastructure maintenance.
  • Port and harbour infrastructure.
• Property and Real Estate: We have helped many maintenance and facilities management companies win contracts in the property and real estate market. This includes helping maintenance companies write bids, proposals, brochures and tenders to strata management companies and directly to real estate agents. On a larger scale, we have helped maintenance providers (including those providing fire, plumbing and other maintenance services) write bids and tenders for large scale property assets including commercial offices and industrial properties. When writing these type of bids, it is important to talk about your capabilities to manage the documentation and compliance side of facilities management. This especially applies to large apartment buildings and the industrial sector – we have experience in winning our clients commercial maintenance contracts, apartment maintenance contracts and industrial maintenance contracts. 
• Data centres and other specialised assets: Our clients have tendered for and won contracts for specialist assets. These include data centres and medical centres. These types of assets often required a highly specialised skillset for maintenance. When bidding for these proposals, we work with our client to focus on your proposed team, depth of resources and ability to hire specialised personnel. In addition, compliance with regulations including entrance and entry procedures is also critical.
• Cleaning and facilities management tenders: We have helped many clients write bids for cleaning and facilities management contracts. Our team helps our clients find maintenance contracts for tender, including property maintenance tenders and property management tenders. We have helped clients win maintenance tenders in Melbourne as well as maintenance tenders in NSW. 
• Assisting the real estate industry. In addition to assisting strata and facilities management companies, we have also assisted real estate agents to respond to and secure property management tenders. For small clients, or clients who aren’t responding to a government RFP, developing a simple building maintenance proposal is all that is required to grow your client base and secure additional contracts. Our experience extends to general maintenance contracts as well as specialist maintenance tenders for electrical, plumbing and fire maintenance. 

Where our clients are working in a specialised sector, there are often specific tenders and contracts tailored to that sector. For example, we have helped clients with high-rise maintenance tenders, plumbing maintenance tenders and electrical maintenance tenders. In addition, our bid writing consultants have facilities management tender templates on hand, and will can show you how to get facilities management contracts by writing a compelling FM tender.

Overall, our team of five bid and tender writers have extensive experience helping clients write winning maintenance and facilities management tenders.

Understanding Maintenance and Facilities Management bids 

Property and infrastructure owners understand the importance of maintenance and facilities management. Maintenance and facilities management, as well as taxes, are often their largest expenses.

They generally adopt formal procurement processes by releasing an RFP, RFT or ROI for maintenance services and facilities management services such as cleaning, plumbing, electrical maintenance and roof maintenance.

How we can help you win maintenance contracts 

Our team of tender writing consultants have completed hundreds of facilities management and maintenance tenders. Whether it be for a mine site, or a large building, we understand maintenance and facilities management and can put a winning tender or proposal together quickly and effectively.

Our team can help write and submit your next facilities management or maintenance tender and will:

• Write the content
• Assist with price estimation (if required)
• Introduce graphics to ensure it is professionally presented
• Ensure it is professionally written
• Leverage on our knowledge of the maintenance and facilities management industry to provide insight and guidance
• Draft professional CVs for your personnel
• Identify and convey your win themes and key points of difference.

Case Study – Tender for Maintenance Services to major hospital in the Northern Territory

Description: We were engaged by a maintenance and building service provider to submit a bid to a major hospital in the Northern Territory. Our client was a key service provider with strong knowledge of the existing hospital protocols and requirements. In order to conduct works in the hospital environment, there are specific accreditations for all personnel, and you need a tailored methodology that limits any impact on patients.

Challenge: This was a must win opportunity for our client. Although they had great knowledge and existing maintenance capabilities, and a team full of depth and expertise, they had no set procedures for operating in the hospital environment.

Solution: We helped tailor their bid to providing maintenance services to the hospital environment by helping them put their existing knowledge of hospital compliance and protocols from pen to paper. This positioned them for success – and set them apart from some of the competitors who submitted generic tenders.

Five strategies to win more facilities maintenance and facilities management contracts

Personalise your bid – Take the time to personalise your bid. Include a ‘Message from the CEO’ at the start of the bid as well as quotes and comments from your proposed team throughout the bid. Ensure these correlates to their respective areas of expertise. For example, have your safety officer write a comment in the safety response, and your team leader or proposed supervisor provide a quote any question on team structure. When submitting a cleaning or facilities maintenance bid, you can be almost certain you will come up against stiff competition. The incumbent will have an existing relationship with the client, and many large agents and facilities maintenance companies almost always have existing relationships with other companies.

By personalising your bid, you are profiling your organisation to the buyer and introducing your key personnel. This creates a positive relationship with the potential client and your team members on paper, and sets a relaxed and more informal tone for any shortlisting presentations and interviews.

It is also important to detail a connection between your previous experience and your proposed team through your personnel. I.e. talk about how your proposed team members have a track record of working together successfully, and detail which of your previous maintenance contracts they have been involved in.

Demonstrate an understanding of the contract or facility – Site visits are a valuable opportunity to gain insights into the contract. Whether you are bidding for a mining maintenance contract, or a facilities maintenance contract for a high-rise building, it is critical that you demonstrate a knowledge of the contract beyond the specifications.

When attending the site, take note of potential issues and areas where you can add value. Where there are challenges, incorporate these into your pricing so you don’t get caught out. Identify areas where you believe the current service provider is providing a substandard service – and focus on these areas in your response. Look at potential up-coming issues that may need to be dealt with and talk about these in your bid with potential solutions. Where there may be issues with the facility that you know from experience arise with other similar buildings, talk about these and how you would overcome or mitigate them.

Finally, ask questions throughout the RFP preparation period to gain a better understanding of the site or facility.

When you are writing the tender or response, ensure that in the executive summary as well as the body of the response, you demonstrate these insights. Talk about how your service will extend beyond the client’s expectations, and where you believe you can deliver improvements.

Provide detailed case studies – Just about every tender will ask for you to talk about your previous experience and even provide case studies. It is critical that you go into the required detail when responding to such questions.

In addition to providing a summary of your previous contracts or projects, for each of the projects you should include:

• The value of the contract
• The term of the contract
• What challenges were encountered and overcome.
• Which key personnel worked on the contract, in what capacity, and will they be part of the proposed team for this contract.
• Were there any safety issues on the site?
• What value-added services were delivered as part of the contract?
• What initiatives did you put in place for the contract to deliver a more efficient, better quality service?

Focus on being local – This is particularly relevant for government contracts, but also applies to the private sector. It is important that you demonstrate your support for the local economy, employment and local community.

Not only does this make sense from a service efficiency perspective, but it help ensure that the downstream economic benefits of the bid or tender flow through to the local economy.

Look at it from the perspective of say a local Council searching for a maintenance supplier for public buildings. If two suppliers are proposing to provide a similar service at a similar price, but one supplier employs a local apprentice, is based in the local area, purchases off other local suppliers and supports the local football team, Council will generally preference this supplier. There is often considerable weighting put on this in the criteria.

Focus on whole of life cost for the project. This is absolutely critical in asset maintenance and general maintenance tenders. You need to cover off whole of life cost and talk about how your maintenance initiatives will lead to a decrease in maintenance over the long term, and also how you will ensure the longevity of any equipment and facilities over the long term. Where you have specific methodologies and strategies to decrease the whole of life cost of the project or works, these should be clearly detailed, summarised and explained in your tender response so that the client understands the benefits. 

Write in a simple and concise manner in order to win the contract. Maintenance services tenders and bids can become highly technical. This is especially the case for maintenance contracts for high value infrastructure projects, data centres and other maintenance contracts in the mining industry. Engineering firms and other maintenance firms often have in-house engineers using highly technical terminology writing tenders and bids. Sometimes this is necessary. However, it’s also important to convey the benefits of your bid or tender in clear, concise, easy to understand language. Not all procurement personnel are subject matter experts and the benefits you bring to the contract need to be easily interpreted and understood by them in order for them to score you enough points to win the contract. 

Don’t forget about safety and the environment when writing the bid. It’s easy to overlook safety and the environment in maintenance and asset maintenance tenders and RFPs. To be fair, some procurement teams do not even incorporate it into their questions but either way you will need to weave it in. Government and private sector maintenance contracts will have a need for robust safety and environmental protocols and controls. The key is to ensure that you demonstrate to the tendering authority that you have thought through the implications and requirements of the contract and have developed a tailored safety and environmental program to address any unique challenges and concerns. 

Areas we service

We help business across Australia secure facilities management and maintenance contracts. Our writers have helped businesses across metropolitan, regional and remote Australia including in:

• Darwin (and across the Northern Territory. This includes writing maintenance tenders to DIPL).
• Sydney (and across NSW. We have strong experience in the Hunter Region especially helping mining services businesses and other tradies write proposals and bids to the resources sector)
• Melbourne (and across Victoria. We have written maintenance and asset maintenance proposals and bids to regional Councils across Victoria as well as helped clients in Bendigo and Wodonga to to secure building maintenance contracts). 
• Hobart (and the rest of Tasmania. This includes assisting mechanical maintenance and asset maintenance services businesses to secure contracts for the maintenance of machinery as well as HVAC systems). 
• Brisbane (and Queensland. We have helped clients secure Diesel machinery maintenance contracts in mines across regional and rural Queensland as well as engineers to submit and secure facilities maintenance contracts for motorways and bridges across Queensland. 
• Perth and Western Australia/ 

We guide our clients on how to write winning maintenance and facilities management proposals. Our experience extends to securing contracts with all levels of government as well as the private sector. We have helped businesses write bids to the federal government, state governments such as the NSW Government and Western Australian Government, as well as local government, shire and local council contracts.

We can help you write proposals for maintenance and facilities management bids for clients in rural and remote areas for both government buildings and private.

The nature of FM and Maintenance tenders

Whether it’s an RFP, RFI, RFT, EOI or just a simple request for quote, Maintenance and FM bids are highly competitive and often have only subtle differences. They often apply to a number of industries at once, for example, electricians, plumbers and carpet cleaning.

There are common and unique requirements for each tender specific to your individual service or industry. Most property owners understand the need and advantages of specialization in the maintenance and building industry. This gives smaller operators have a good chance at winning work.

Regardless of the size of your organizations, clients expect you to jump through all the same hoops to win maintenance tenders, including work health and safety, human resource management, and site induction requirements.

They often ask for documentation of policies that many firms simply do not have nor do they have the resources or time to create. Here at The Tender Team, we have many of the necessary documents on file as templates.

The nature of the business usually ensures they are long term contracts, making it even more important to put your best foot forward when applying for maintenance tenders. On a positive note, they are often for new projects where there is no incumbent, such as defence projects.

Our consultants have completed hundreds of maintenance tenders and are skilled in project managing the process as well as drafting responses. Furthermore, we have templates in place of many of the policies and procedures requested, saving you time and money in drafting them.

Give us a call today to pick our brains and talk about how we can assist with your next bid or tender or email info@thetenderteam.com.au

Client testimonials

We used The Tender Team to assist us with preparing a maintenance tender. It was a substantial contract to a university that we needed to win. The maintenance services covered plumbing, electrical and other trades so it suited us down the ground. There were some fairly tough questions on response times and whole of life cost which we didn’t know how to answer and what they expected of us. Jason and Deirdre assisted us to come up with a compelling response for each of the questions. They know the construction, facilities maintenance and building maintenance industry well. They know what you need to write to win and they tailored our business to the opportunity. Overall, it was a very positive experience and we would have been stuffed if we had tried to do it ourselves. The Tender Team are the best!

Ben T | Building Maintenance | Perth, Sydney and Brisbane

We are a maintenance services provider to the mining industry. We provide heavy duty diesel maintenance services as well as equipment maintenance. Jason and the rest of the writers at The Tender Team write all our bids and tenders. They know the mining industry and understand maintenance services and maintenance bids. They are reliable, credible, transparent and professional. When you deal with them, you know they are good and can be confident in the tender or proposal response to the RFT which they will produce. 

Brian F | Mining Maintenance Contractor | Western Australia

Frequently asked questions our clients often ask

How do I get commercial maintenance tenders?

You can search for government tenders in the maintenance sector by signing up to e-tenders and other state and local government portals in your region. Contact our team for assistance. For the private sector, generally speaking, the first step is to develop relationships with the companies (or strata managers) you would like to service. After that, you will get the opportunity to tender to provide maintenance services.

When you get this opportunity, it’s a good idea to put the time and resources into creating a compelling bid or tender proposal to increase you chances of success.

Can I arrange training for my team of four in-house bid writers for facilities maintenance bids?

Yes – this is a service we provide. Two of our lead bid writers work closely with facilities management companies across Australia to empower their in-house tender writing teams to get better results. We transfer our skills, tips and know-how to your personnel through one-on-one, or one-on-team bid writing support at your offices or online.

Our training workshops is tailored to ensure your team gets the most benefit out of it. 

How do I create a bid library using AI to write tenders more efficiently?

The first step is to select a suitable software package. It can be as simply as using Microsoft word or google and a shared drive, as well as ChatGPT. It can also be as complex as a tailor made, in-house software package for your organisation.

Our team of bid writers are experts in using AI to help our clients win more bids and can drive you through this process and recommend the best solution for your organisation.

I need help with my FM tender. Is there a consultant that can help?

Yes. Our team of tender and proposal writing consultants here at The Tender Team can certainly assist. We have helped small, medium and large businesses across Australia respond to and win FM Tenders. 

Why are we losing facilities management tenders?

Our team would need to see your facilities management bids in order to assist with this. Here at The Tender Team, we provide a tender review services where we can look at your bid prior to submission (or at first draft stage) and let you know what needs to be improved. Jason Cooney, our Director, is hands-on with all reviews and generally completes them all himself.

It’s also a good idea to ask the client for feedback in the form of a debrief if you are unsuccessful. 

How do I get facilities management contracts?

You win facilities management contracts in Australia by putting forward a compelling bid that focuses on the long term nature of these types of contracts, your team, capabilities, experience and the whole of life costs of the facilities. 

I need a bid or tender writing consultant that specialises in facilities management bids in Australia. Where can I find one?

Here at The Tender Team. Contact us to arrange a discussion with with our bid writers. We specialise in facilities management bids and would love the opportunity to assist you with your next bid to help you win!

We keep losing facilities maintenance tenders. Can you help us win more FM contracts?

Yes we certainly hope we can and have a track record of helping other businesses do the same. The first step is to identify why you are losing the contracts. We would ask questions such as:

1. Is it that your tender documents are of poor quality?
2. Or you may have exemplary tender documents with pricing that is substantially above market?
3. Do you have the right qualifications and licenses to qualify for the contract?
4. Are you bidding for contracts you have a real chance of winning and if so, are you tailoring your response to each opportunity?

Once we have identified the reason your are losing FM and other maintenance bids, we will work with you to improve your bids and turn your weakness into a strength. 

Can you help us find facilities maintenance and general maintenance contract opportunities?

Yes. We have a tender and bid identification service where we help engineers, facilities management and maintenance businesses and other tradespeople and contractors to identify tender and contract opportunities. In addition to tender and RFT identification, we believe that a robust bid / no bid process is also critical. I.e. it is important to only bid for opportunities which you have a reasonable prospect of success with winning – and not just for the sake of it. By thinking through the opportunity, checking that your experience aligns with the requirements and ensuring you have the right personnel and can adhere to the mandatory criteria, you will ensure that you are bidding for contracts which you have a good chance of success at.

Can we use AI to write our FM tender?

AI is useful especially when developing a first draft. However, a first draft developed with AI is really only a base draft and you will nee to carefully review it and incorporate any additional information before tailoring it and creating a more advanced draft. Our team of bid writers will help you assess the different software options available and choose the software that is right for you. We can also help you create a bid library to help ensure you develop bids and tenders efficiently. 

Do you help businesses write and win FM and maintenance contracts nationally across Australia?

Yes. The Tender Team is experienced in helping facilities management businesses write bids to the public sector (government) and private sector across Australia. We can help you win national contracts, where facilities are spread across multiple states, as well as in specific cities and towns. Our experienced bid writers come from across Australia and can bring local knowledge to your proposal depending on where it is located. 

What is the best strategy for a small facilities management company to win local government maintenance tenders in Australia?

In our experience here at The Tender Team helping small to medium sized facilities management and maintenance companies win local government tenders, we have found the best strategies have been to:

• Focus on local content and community benefits and the fact that you are a locally based supplier.
• Provide a tangible commitment to employing locals and upskilling locals.
• Demonstrate and list what local suppliers you will support.
• Highlight the benefits you bring as a small and medium business including being more agile and responsive given your geographic location and how your senior personnel are more hands on. 

What can we do to improve our technical writing for bids that are for electrical and mechanical maintenance contracts which are highly complex?

This is always a challenge. On the one hand your proposal needs to be technically accurate. On the other hand, you need to ensure there is readability and ease of assessment for the procurement team. Our experienced writers will help you with this. Although some of our tender writers here at The Tender Team have engineering backgrounds, the real value we bring is in our bid writing experience (and infographic design).

We will bring our expertise to your bid and will help you create a technically accurate, easy to read submission that ensures your highly technical methodologies for your maintenance bids are translated into clear and compelling propositions that are easy to understand and score well. 

We are a regional contractor based in Western Australia. We need to write a winning preventative maintenance tender response targeted at mining sites in Australia. Can you help with this and how can we do this?

Certainly – we can assist. There are generally a few critical success factors you need to achieve if you want to successfully tender for work at remote mining sites. In our experience you should:

• Focus on and demonstrate your ability to provide a reliable service. This includes a detailed methodology and focus on the logistics side of your operation and how you will deliver results in a remote community. 
• Detail and showcase your supply chain management processes as well as your ability to resource the project or job from a personnel perspective. 
• Talk about your ability to minimise downtime and quantify this capability in your previous case studies. 

Do you help with WHS responses? We are submitting an infrastructure asset maintenance bid and we need to develop a compliant WHS section?

Yes. The fact is that you can download templates and submit a ‘compliant’ WHS management system with your tender. However, although it may pass, it may not score very well. We will work with you to tailor your WHS procedures and documentation to the specific risks of the assets you are maintaining. This will help you score well as it will demonstrate how you can foresee and deal with the risks associated with specific infrastructure assets such as rail corridors and bridges. 

How long does it take your consultants to help us write a proposal or RFP response for a major commercial property building maintenance contact?

It depends. Generally speaking the process takes approximately two weeks. That includes writing, as well as going back and forth although it often takes up to a month. It depends on the size of the bid or contract as well as the extent of your existing documentation. Either way, if we take on your tender we will work within the deadline provided and do our absolute best to help you win. 

What ‘win themes’ should we include and incorporate to help us win an RFT and contract for high-rise residential strata maintenance?

This will generally depend on the nature and specific needs of the contract. However, some of the win-themes we generally explore and include in these types of maintenance bids when assisting clients across Australia include:

• Communicating with residents and minimising disruption during the maintenance works.
• Ensuring compliance with all requirements and Australian Standards such as fire, plumbing and electrical and having a strong process for any certification.
• Providing innovation solutions that result in a Whole-Of-Life Cost Reduction for the owners of the property and demonstrating your ability to implement these solution. 

What’s the best way to use case studies in our FM bids in order to show we can manage large, multi-state facilities maintenance contracts and thereby win new work?

Your case studies and response to questions on prior experience should cover off and demonstrate experience across all matrices including:

• Your national footprint (since it’s a multi-state facilities bid)
• Your ability to manage your resources over multiple states and allocate them where you may have an increase in demand in one state. 
• Your scale and size and ability to scale your resources as required.
• Your ability to consistently provide a service of high quality. This extends to back end communication and reporting. 

Can you create us a customised template for all of our facility management tenders? What do we need to include to make sure we always win (or at least score well and have a good chance)?

Yes. Our team of bid writers here at The Tender Team has helped many different maintenance businesses create templates that are tailored and focused. Key items that should be included are:

• A service methodology that is tailored to the opportunity.
• A Quality Management System
• WHS and Environmental Protocols
• A robust Mobilisation Plan

How do we answer questions that ask about ‘whole-of-life-cost’ in asset maintenance tenders in Australia?

When you respond to a question on whole of life cost, you have to think beyond pricing and focus on long term pricing and how you can provide value to the client by decreasing the whole of life cost of an asset even if there is a short-term increase in price. 

Our team can help you with this and we generally recommend you:

• Create graphics and infographics and even graphs in order to show the benefits of your proposal.
• Explain how any innovative ideas for maintenance would be implemented and provide proof via case studies where possible.
• Clearly explain how and what amount any future capital expenditure will be reduced. 

Can you help us with pricing our maintenance bid? We have a data centre facility maintenance contract we are bidding for?

No. Although we would love to help, and will assist you to understand and interpret and pricing questions where possible, we are unable to help you set your pricing. 

Will you help us create a mobilisation plan for a large maintenance contract? Do we have to create a new tailored one each time we bid? We are an FM businesses in Victoria.

Yes a mobilisation plan is critical and this is usually reflected in the weighting criteria for the bid. Rarely are you able to provide a generic mobilisation plan. Instead, we recommend you tailor your mobilisation plan for the specific maintenance contract and use it as an opportunity to demonstrate that you have thought through the contract.

We are consistently losing to the incumbent. What can we do to give ourselves a better chance of winning an electrical maintenance contract?

We have outlined strategies above. Some of the strategies our writers here at The Tender Team adopt to help you win against an incumbent include:

• Putting forward value added services, fresh ideas and innovation. Proving that these will work by providing samples. 
• Analysing the current service and expectations and then detailing how you will exceed them.
• Putting forward additional services such as reporting and IT related admin that the incumbent may not be providing.

You need to focus on all of these and detail their benefits so you are taken seriously by the reader and offer a better alternative to the current provider. 

Do you offer a bid review service? We have an in-house team of bid writers but we want to ensure our FM and maintenance bids are in line with best practice?

Yes certainly. We offer, through our highly experience Director, Jason Cooney, a dedicated facilities management bid writing service. Jason personally conducts these reviews and will not only check compliance with mandatory criteria, but more importantly, how well you have integrated win themes throughout your bid and structured your responses to each question. We will also review any CVs and Bios to ensure they are structured and well tailored to the opportunity.