How to write a tender: The Complete Guide

It’s safe to say that tendering is a great opportunity to develop your business, providing services for the public sector. With over 150 tenders uploaded to our 10 portals each day, there is an opportunity for every business – including yours.

Once you’ve found your opportunity, you’re going to want to make sure you maximise it. So, in this blog I’m going to run through how to write a tender properly.

Don’t just jump in

One of the more exhaustive, yet essential processes before writing a tender is to make sure you know what you’re writing about – not to mention this process is often overlooked by many taking on tendering for the first time.

Yes, it’s easy to quickly jump in and try and answer the question in front of you without a moment’s hesitation, but this can quickly snowball into missed requirements and drafting something that doesn’t answer the question.

More often than not, those who are new to tendering can often end up ensconced in their own echo chamber – putting down the answer to the question they think the evaluator should be asking, not what they’re actually looking for.

This approach to writing a tender will, more often than not, score poorly.

Know what you’re writing about

Before you start writing – make sure you can actually fulfil the criteria as set out in the specification, avoiding wasted time. Consider:

Do you meet the minimum financial criteria?
Can you feasibly meet the requirements of the buyer?
Do you have the required accreditations and memberships?
Do you possess the relevant experience to undertake the contract?
From here, you can make a bid/no-bid decision – if you can’t meet the likes of the above, you’re likely to be excluded from the process altogether or end up scoring poorly.

PQQs/SQs

So now we can get into how to actually write a tender. So, we’ve evaluated the specification, and now we’re ready to tackle the submission.

PQQs or pre-qualification questionnaires (or sometimes referred to as selection questionnaires) typically ask questions regarding what you have done in the past previously and are used as the first stage of selection, as part of the restricted tender procedure – open procedure tenders seldom use PQQs.

As discussed in the previous point, we are going to want to explain how our experience makes us suitable for delivering the contract.

Typically, completing a PQQ involves:

Filling in basic company information, such as registration numbers
Confirming that you haven’t breached legislation, or became a James Bond villain overnight
Technical and professional ability – or case studies (see next section)
A declaration and contact details
Some PQQs are different than others, however, this is the typical process. Some PQQs, such as PAS91s in the construction sector, consist of several additional sections, which often entails a far more detailed, evidence-based approach.

Case studies

Normally included in the PQQ section under ‘Technical and Professional Ability’, case studies ask you to describe 2-3 contracts of a similar nature that you have completed, or are currently undertaking, in the past five years.

These case studies are an opportunity to sell yourself and demonstrate previous successes, and how you can bring similar results for buyers.

With word counts typically within the 500-word mark, you could consider:

What is the scale of the contract? For example, how many properties do you renovate within a given period?
What is the nature of the relationship? How did this start?
How did we mobilise and deliver the contract?
Have you had any key challenges, and how have we learnt from them?
To summarise, what are the results? Did you finish on-time and within budget, and has the contract been renewed or extended?
ITT section

Now we move to the ITT section. This is where knowing how to write a tender will come in handy, as this is the proposal section. This is what we WILL do.

Typically, questions in a tender may cover the likes of:

Quality management
Health and safety
Environment and sustainability
Social value
Mobilisation
Service delivery
Experience
Complaints handling
Continuous improvement
Supply chain and subcontractor management
Deconstruct the question

Tender questions are often made up of several key points which a buyer will want you to address, with marks distributed equally across each section. Consequently, to maximise your marks, you should always deconstruct the question in such a way that all points are addressed. Let’s look at this example:

The principal contractor must provide details of how you propose to manage your sub-contractors and supply chain (including placement of orders to ensure appropriate lead times).

In your response, please include details on the below:

Provide 2 examples of a problem which occurred completing similar work and how did you overcome this?
Provide 2 examples of problems you have faced with sub-contractors in the past and how did you overcome this?
So – let’s deconstruct this one. The bold sections are the mini-questions, shall we say, which should inform our structure. Note, the buyer has been kind to us on this one also, with some bullet points to point out some other points they want to see covered.

We could, therefore, adopt the following headings and subheadings:

Management of our subcontractors and supply chain
Placement of orders to ensure appropriate lead times
Problems occurring during similar work
Problems with subcontractors
As such, this clearly highlights to the buyer that we have addressed each point of the question, making their life easier. Not to mention it makes sure we cover the points they’re asking!

Make life easier for the buyer: be concise

Buyers will, potentially, have hundreds of tender submissions to evaluate, and as such, you want to write content that is easy-reading and clearly highlights conformance with the specification. Some pointers to make your submissions as easy reading as possible include:

Use headings matched to the deconstructed parts of the question
Don’t use filler or fluff content, this doesn’t add anything of value, and instead could frustrate an evaluator
On a similar note, be to the point – if you can say something in fewer words, do it
Bullet points are your friend – they are easy to read, and can often allow you to say a lot more with tight word counts
You still want to make sure that, even when you’re being concise, that what you’re writing both:

Is coherent, makes sense and answers the question
Is grammatically correct, free from colloquialisms and mistakes
The above will leave a negative impression with the evaluator; we’re all human, so we don’t want to put them in a bad mood. An unhappy evaluator is one that is more likely to deduct marks.

Avoiding filler content

This idea of being to the point is especially important when we consider word counts. It’s not uncommon to see these restricted to as little as 200 words, for example, whilst asking for several things to be covered in a response. Here, being concise and avoiding ‘filler’ or ‘fluff’ content is vital – see the example below:

‘Here at Tendering Company Ltd, we are passionate about quality and strive to implement quality into all we do’

This is a particularly empty statement which doesn’t answer the question, especially in the context of a short response. Think about it – this is 19 wasted words, nearly 10% of the word count saying absolutely nothing. No company is going to say they don’t care about quality, right?

Review and proofreading

So, once you’ve written your response, you should always make sure it has been proofread. After all, spelling and grammatical errors reflect badly on your submission, highlighting a lack of attention to detail.

Ask a colleague, a manager or director – an additional pair of eyes will always prove useful when:

Identifying mistakes, such as sentences that do not make sense
Contradictions or points which may come across negatively
Additional content or points that could be fed in
For example, here at Hudson Succeed, we use a three-stage checking process for all tender responses:

The writer will conduct a self-review before sending for proofreading
This will be passed to another member of our bid team for review
Our Head of Bid Management, or Bid Manager, will review the content before finalising
Submission

Tender submissions can be requested by buyers through a variety of means:

Email submission

Postal submission

Uploading to a procurement portal

The latter is, by far the most common. To mitigate the chance of any potential IT errors, it’s always best to ensure you handle the submission in advance – usually days – to eliminate the chance of any last-minute mistakes and stress. Late submissions – even by 1 second – are often disregarded and won’t be evaluated. So, plan ahead, and get it submitted in good time. We always try to get tenders submitted at least a day prior to the submission deadline.

So, time to get cracking

Using these tips and pointers, you should be well on your way to figuring out how to write a tender properly and take control of your Bid Management. However, should you ever find yourself in need of some assistance, why not check out our Tender Mentor and Tender Writing services?

Our team of experienced bid writers and managers are on-hand to provide whatever level of support you require with your qualitative submissions, from writing entire quality responses, to guidance notes to a full review.