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How to write winning public sector construction and FM tenders – and comply with UK Procurement Act and Social Value requirements

How to write winning public sector construction and FM tenders – and comply with UK Procurement Act and Social Value requirements

The UK public sector allocated a large percentage of it’s 300 billion annual procurement spend on the construction and facilities management industry. At Tsaks Consulting, our UK based bid writing team, headed by Jason Cooney, helps contractors, trades and FM providers win spots on key frameworks such as Crown Commercial Service (CCS) and other public sector procurement bodies and frameworks across the UK.

To write winning public sector construction and FM tenders you need to:

  1. Write for the new procurement act.
  2. Focus on social value.
  3. Tell them how you will fulfil the tender requirements.

We have an 85% success rate and have helped clients win over 76 frameworks in the construction sector to date. In order to be successful, you need to comply with the new Procurement Act requirements and put forward a compelling Social Value response.

In this guide, we discuss how to write a winning ITT or tender proposal.

1.    Writing for the new Procurement Act – and it’s impact on UK Frameworks

Contracts are now awarded based on Most Advantageous Tender (MAT) as opposed to Most Economically Advantageous Tender) MEAT. This has a major impact on how you write bids. You need to:

  • Focus on your soft sell. It’s not all about value and money. It’s about non-financial outcomes, quality, experience and social value. Give these the focus they deserve in your bid.
  • Keep track of potentially opportunities. Engage with key stakeholders where possible – and trust the pipeline.
  • Deliver on your contract obligations – and price them in. Regardless of if you win a FM tender or framework in London or a construction contract in Birmingham, you need to be able to deliver on it. If you don’t and you fail compliance checks, it can damage your prospects for future bids. Ensure you can deliver on what you commit to.

Case Study: Major Construction Firm

Here at Tsaks Consulting UK, we worked with a major construction company in the UK to overhaul the tone of their bid library content so it’s more appealing to procurement personnel focused on MAT. They had a poor social value response and proposal and their bid contained a lot of marketing ‘fluff’ which would be hard to deliver on and was unrealistic.

Our UK based bid and tender writers, led by Jason Cooney, rewrote their generic content with a more qualitative flavour, removed some of the unachievable promises in their generic content, and created a basic framework for them to create future social value responses.

2.    The increasing importance of Social Value

If you want to win a construction or FM framework or contract in England, Scotland or Wales, you need to score well on social value. It increasingly reflects up to 10 and 20% of the weighting criteria. Many construction and facilities maintenance businesses think:

  • Social Value has nothing to do with the project.
  • I know how to do the job and we have the best methodology – that’s what matters.
  • The client knows us and our reputation and we will be fine.

This is incorrect. The numbers in the weighting criteria are critical and we have seen even the best, most well regarded FM businesses in the UK write quality responses, score well on every aspect of the qualitative criteria, except social value, and lose the framework or ITT.

Our team of bid writers in London and across the UK, led by our lead tender writer, Jason Cooney, recommend the following in order to help win frameworks and ITTs across the UK by scoring well in social value:

  • Quantify what you will deliver. If you will hire personnel, tell them exactly how many and at what level. If you will provide some other social benefit, put a number on it.
  • Quantify any environmental benefits. That means putting a number on the actual emissions reduced and detailing where any waste will go to. You also need to give an outline on how any emissions reductions will be measured and reported on.
  • Ensure anything you put forward is measurable.

Case Study – Our London bid writing team helps a London based business improve their social value score by 50%

We were engaged by a facilities management business to review their social value response for a tender. Jason Cooney, our Director, reviewed their draft social value response. It had lots of great ideas and initiatives but they were all quite generic. The business had been scoring poorly in social value. We went through each initiative, and tailored it for the specific project / framework.

We then looked at each initiative and asked:

  • How will it be measured
  • What’s the target benefit
  • What is the pound value benefit?

By asking these three questions, we updated their response so it was more objective and they scored high marks for social value in this tender, which contributed to our client winning the tender.

3.    Fulfil the requirements – and tell them how you will – to win the bid

It’s easy (and tempting) to write all about yourself and experience. However, you need to focus on the project and how you will deliver it. Focus on the requirements of the bid or project, how your capabilities align with the requirements and what you will actually do. Your proposed methodology, how you will mitigate any risks and evidence that you have the expertise and have done it before are all critical.

For example, our team recently help a client write a tender for a framework involving the maintenance for 20 NHS buildings across Birmingham and Manchester. It was a three-year framework. We worked with them to improve their bid by:

  • Putting forward their proposed team and their respective roles if successful.
  • Writing a detailed methodology for both urgent and general maintenance works.
  • Writing a table of tailored risks and how they will be mitigated.
  • Tailoring a methodology and proposed maintenance program for each individual building and premises.
  • Detailing innovative ways we would deliver the service to decrease whole of life costs and report efficiently.
  • Describing the proposed CAFM (Computer-Aided Facilities Management) programs you propose to use.

Tsaks Consulting UK is here to help

Our team of experienced construction and facilities sector tender writers are ready to help you write and win public sector tenders and frameworks. From CCS to Pagabo, we bring over 42 years combined experience to bid and tender writing and help businesses across the UK respond to ITTs and write wining framework submissions.