Tendering’s Rocky Road

#SEWeek16 drawing to a close. How do you engage?

So you have decided that you would like to have a bite of the £45 billion government public service procurement budget. You have carefully selected the contract you would like to bid for.

Before you proceed any further from the contract selection stage we really need to tell you about what you are up against. Not to scare you, but rather inform you.

First things first… Work out how many days of lost revenue you can afford to take. Bidding for contracts takes time and money which you may never recoup. If you do not like the idea of your business losing income on a contract, then you need to decide whether you are prepared to go through with the bidding process.

Secondly, do you have all the resources/expertise necessary or are prepared to form a consortium with another business? This is an obvious barrier to entry for many start-up SMEs who have expertise in the field but lack experience. On that note check out tomorrows’ blog, for some of the advice we would give to SMEs wanting to get government contracts.

Thirdly, some government contracts might want you to have a level of financial resources at your disposal. This can vary from contract to contract. But you might want to look closely for it. It’s not worth going for a contract when for example they want you to hold £50,000 in reserve when you only have £30,000.

Fourthly, you could have put together what you think is the perfect bid, but still not win the contract. This happens more often than not to many SMEs (indeed, most of the time). You may not know why, but you are entitled to feedback. But if this happens, one thing is for sure is that your business has lost revenue whilst you were bidding for the contract. On some contracts there can be many businesses bidding for the same contract, so your odds of winning are somewhat decreased.

Lastly, whatever you do, conduct a quick Bid/No-Bid analysis. If you are required to complete a pre-qualification questionnaire (PQQ), make sure you have covered all the mandatory bases. After all, if they are asking questions which exclude you from the beginning, there’s no point in bidding. So you might consider revoking your expression and finding something else.

There are companies who advise SMEs on this process so it might be a good idea to talk to one or two of them before you start bidding.

Check out some of our other blogs on public sector tendering.