How a London-based building and construction contractor won their first multi-million dollar pound public sector tender framework
Winning a public sector contract with the NHS, CCS or other public entity is a dream for many builders across the UK who operate in the private sector. There is significant complexity, increased compliance requirements and a focus on Social Value. Our team often helps contractors step into the public sector space. In this case study, we will explore how we partnered with a building and construction contractor to win a three year contract in London and take a look at the strategies we employed to win.
The situation: skills and expertise but no paperwork or public sector experience.
Our client had a strong reputation in the private sector across London and greater London in both the commercial and residential construction sector. They had a broad range of internal capabilities in construction including electrical and plumbing. They had significant depth of resources and equipment. However, they were heavy reliant on repeat business and marketing. Most of their jobs and projects were short to medium term and they didn’t have supply certainty. They wanted to win a public sector construction tender.
The other challenge is having been in the private sector since inception, they had limited paperwork, quality assurance documentation and safety documentation. Our client had used Find A Tender to look for tenders, however, there were too many opportunities and it was overwhelming for them to firstly identify an opportunity, and secondly comprehend all the documentation requirements.
Identifying tender and bid opportunities and writing a winning bid
We helped the client submit and win a quality tender by:
- Helping them identify a suitable bid. This was critical as there were over ten frameworks they were thinking for applying for at once. We reviewed the ten bids they had considered and assisted the client to narrow these down based on mandatory criteria to three framework opportunities. Once we had reviewed the mandatory criteria, we conducted a detailed review of three opportunities and cross-checked the questions and framework specifications against our clients capabilities. We then identified one strategic opportunity. The opportunity was for a social housing refurbishment framework for a period of three years. The contract was approximately 30 Million in value over multiple lots.
- Preparing the supporting documentation. The bulk of the work was preparing the requirement supporting documentation for the bid. We worked with the client to create a checklist of the required supporting documentation. It was extensive and the usual WHS, Quality and other documents were required. We worked with the client to not only create all the necessary documents, but also tailor the safety documents to the requirements and scope of the specific tender.
- Reassuring the government our client could manage the contract. Our client had the capability and resources. However, they had limited experience in managing a framework, limited reporting procedures and simple IT systems. We worked with them to put all these procedures in place and communicate this in the bid. This resulted in a bid which presented them as a construction contractor with strong reporting and communication procures and a history on delivering to clients in the commercial sector with similar requirements to government.
- Creating a social value proposal. Our client was locally based but failed to communicate their social value. After detailed discussions with their team, we identified many social value initiatives they were part of. They were simply ‘shy’ to talk about them or even boast about them. We created an evidence-based, measurable social value response.
Outcome: Their first public sector tender framework success
The result was a win. Our client won their first construction sector framework. Key features of the contract included:
- Contract value: 30M across all lots with an estimated 2M revenue for them.
- Scoring an average of 8.7 across all questions.
- One happy client.
Upon receiving the news they were awarded the tender they wrote:
“ Dear Tsaks Consulting team, thank you, thank you, thank you. We were not expecting success in public sector tenders so early in the process and we couldn’t have done it without your help. It was a demanding experience since we had only serviced the private sector and they don’t require all the safety and quality documents.
Jason and the team were great in managing both the bid writing process as well as our emotions and psychology. This will be a real underwriter for our team and if we tried to complete it ourselves we probably would have been non-compliant. The Tsaks Consulting Team are fantastic and we are glad we googled and found your team and for all the help you have given us”.
Managing Director – London Based Building and Construction Firm
Need helping finding and winning your first public sector DPS, tender or framework?
Contact our team here at Tsaks Consulting UK to discuss how we can help you take the first step. We help businesses across the UK including in London, Manchester, Birmingham and beyond write and win their first public sector frameworks.