One of the questions we get asked most often at Skillfair is, ‘Can a small company win a tender and how do I do it?’ The short answer to the question is ‘Yes’, but the ‘How-To’ is a bit longer. This series of articles is intended to take you through the key issues step by step so you can decide if engaging with the tendering process is worth the effort for your business and if you go ahead with it to help you do it as efficiently and effectively as possible.
Some of our members are relatively large companies who've won large projects through tendering, worth many hunders of thousands of pounds - but we also have one man bands who've won projects, got themselves onto preferred suppliers lists or teamed up with other consultants to win larger projects. The feedback we get is that it can be done, but you need to choose your tender carefully and be prepared to put the effort in over a period of time to be successful.
Each of these Q&A articles can be read standalone, or you can work your way through one at a time. Click here to read the Q&s
When you’ve read everything, you may feel that you want to give tendering a try but still need more help. There are plenty of consultants and advisors on Skillfair who have a background in procurement and tendering and who specialise in helping companies get to grips with the process, to get in touch with one to help you the easiest approach is to post a project on Skillfair explaining the kind of help you’re looking for.
5 comments:
Your blog is excellent however I cannot see where one can add to the blog except by a long winded 'comment' form that emails a person.
My question relates to the fact that most public sevice contrcats require H & S Quality ISO etc documents that few one man bands and even 'partnering' with those that have has its challenges but not withstanding this how long does it take to complete the average tender. In our experiences tw to three days at a minimum and then you may have missed the deadline!
© Jon Harvey 2009
13 ways to ensure that Procurement Executives get best value from
purchasing leadership and organisational development consultancy
1. Make sure that the PQQ is at least 65 pages long with 367 separate items of information to gather. It is
well known that the best consultants in this arena thoroughly enjoy and indeed have bucketfuls of time to
answer numerous questions about their own policies on health & safety, quality, complaints handling,
business continuity and hand washing protocols (even though many of them work in small or single
person firms).
2. Be sure to embed the description of the requirement somewhere towards the middle of the specification
document as this helps ensure the consultant will read all 188 items about the terms and conditions of
the contract. Whatever you do, label the requirement in some way that means it is not easily found. You
want people to dig for what you want them to do for you.
3. Take care to include at least two, if not three different deadline dates as this helps the consultant keep
alert. A single clear deadline date has been shown to produce only poor quality tender documents.
4. Learn to use the „cut and paste‟ function of your word processor. It is an invaluable tool when compiling
PQQs since it then becomes remarkably easy to produce document paragraph numbering arrangements
that only the very best consultants can hope to fathom.
5. Be sure to ask several „wild card‟ questions that will sort the men/women from the boys/girls. For
example asking the question “what percentage of your core capability would be represented by this
opportunity?” is so deliciously full of loosely defined words that this will provide an excellent filter and
criterion for assembling the final list of candidates.
6. Do know that the worst Leadership and OD consultants around have far too much flair, verve,
enthusiasm and creativity to want to engage with the detailed procurement processes that you design. A
crucial way to ensure your organisation ends up hiring the best is to make your procedures
disproportionately complex in relation to the requirement being tackled. A good rule of thumb is ask 15
PQQ questions for every day of the consultant‟s time that she/he might end of spending on the project.
7. Even though this kind of consultancy is essentially an activity involving lots of words, some reports and
perhaps training / facilitation materials, be sure to ask several questions about the „materials handling‟,
RIDDOR1 and transportation during the course of the project roll out. The best consultants in this arena
will have gained the highest levels of environmental impact assessments and accreditation to
international sustainability standards.
8. Policies on matters relating to diversity, staff development, complaints handling, and quality assurance
are essential measures of how well consultants practice in these areas. It is well known for example, that
the organisations with the best performances in these areas have enumerable and voluminous policies
on all these and related areas. In other words – when in doubt ask for a written policy, in triplicate.
9. Treat these consultants at arm‟s length. Many of them are known to be not much better than „snake oil‟
salespeople with whom you cannot trust yourself. They have „Svengali‟ like powers of verbal persuasion
so whatever you do, do not talk with them. Ensure that they can only communicate with you via email or
even better the e-procurement website.
10. When answering questions put on the e-procurement website ensure that your answers restate what you
have already put in the documentation. Their attempts to get you to „explain‟ what you really meant by
1 Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 1995
© Jon Harvey 2009
(for example) “detail what experience you have of working within the parameters of Government
procedures and protocols” must be met with equally impenetrable explanations. They are only trying to
catch you out!
11. Another good stock phrase to use in response to enquiries is “that information is not available at this
stage of the procurement process”. This will handle most of the questions put and indeed will inspire
creativity from the consultants asking the questions. Their attempts to „make something up‟ in the
absence of a clear specification are remarkably effective at helping you choose the best value supplier.
12. Even though you are sourcing professional expertise here and a good number of your questions will
relate to this, do not be put off from putting in place procedures that essentially treat these suppliers like
commodities. Many of the questions you use when sourcing (for example) office products, utility supplies
and other bulk purchasing can be used with these consultants too.
13. Always have in reserve the tried and tested procurement methodology of “numbers in a hat”.
Occasionally, despite your best efforts to make the PQQ process as tortuous as possible, you may well
still get far more responses back than you have the resources to analyse adequately. At this point you
can bring in this method. Allocate a number to each one and ask a colleague to pick a few numbers at
random. By the universal laws of probability, fate and serendipity, you will automatically and miraculously
pull out the best candidates to go onto the next stage of your procurement process!
I hope these guidelines help. None of the examples are made up (well, perhaps the hand-washing example
was – although watch this space in this age of increasing infections) and have been drawn from my
experience in bidding against many invitations to tender and pre qualification questionnaires. Like any
management tool, procurement used well, can be a real boon to organisations in sourcing the best possible
suppliers.
As a long term advocate and practitioner in the field of continuous improvement, I am a robust supporter of
good procurement practice. I also consider it my responsibility to challenge poor practice when I see or
experience it. This may be to my cost of course and means, perhaps, I do not gain access to some business
that I might if I were more compliant and adaptable. But, just as there is „humbug‟, „blarney‟ and „baloney‟ in
consultancy (and politics and religion while I am on the point!) – there are also increasing amounts in
procurement too, I feel.
If good procurement practice is about securing the best possible supplier (a supplier who meets or indeed
even exceeds all the specified requirements at the cheapest cost), how do we know? Not only must
procurement deliver best value, it must itself be best value as well.
One of my concerns is that procurement processes are self-reinforcing. The supplier is chosen and the right
choice must have been made because the supplier ticked all the right boxes. But is it possible that a better
supplier was excluded by dint of the procurement process itself having inbuilt (and perhaps untested)
assumptions & criteria? How are procurement processes evaluated?
Jon Harvey is an independent leadership and organisation development adviser who has been working in
this field for over 20 years. jon@jonharveyassociates.co.uk
Helping you connect the prose and the passion
to deliver superlative results
www.jonharveyassociates.co.uk
http://smallcreativeideas.blogspot.com/ for ideas about how to improve public services
Don't forget that putting in for a tender can be an effective way of marketing yourself for other work which isn't advertised. I've been asked to quote for work as a direct result of bidding for a tender (and not winning). I put in a good enough bid that the organisation kept my details
In my opinion it is not really a practical proposition for "one man bands" however professional to tender for any of the government projects. The reasoning behind my thinking is that they will be unable to provide the assurances required.
However, if those SkillFair members who are able to provide staisfactory assurances could use the services of the smaller members in the form of a consortium then there could be both short-term and long-term benefits for all involved.
We have direct feedback from 'one man band' consultants who have been successful in winning public sector projects - as well as other feedback from people who've tried very hard and given up.
I think the issue is that despite appearances not all tenders are the same - they are as different as the organisations running the procurement and some are interested in and willing to help SMEs whereas others aren't.
The problem we all face is working out which is which and targetting the helpful ones!
Post a Comment