Compiling your tender

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Before you start compiling your tender

• Read the specification carefully, and read more than once!
• Make sure your proposal is for what the commissioner wants, not just what you want to deliver, or have provided previously
• Know the scoring criteria
• Plan your response so you spend most time on the sections where you can score most marks
• Know your competition
• Be aware of liabilities of taking on contract – e.g. TUPE
• Ask and submit questions
• Allow plenty of time, it always takes longer than you think

Writing your tender

Tendering and Bidding Briefing: Give your tender a winning chance (pdf) from The Finance Hub provides the following advice:

• Allow plenty of time for writing and submitting the tender. It will take more time than you think.
• Make sure you focus on the needs which the service is intended to address and are clear about the outcomes you plan to deliver.
• If necessary, ask for the scoring mechanism that is going to be used and make sure you focus your answers to maximise the points received.
• Remember that the contract commissioner can only go on what you have put in your bid. They cannot take account of any other information about you. You should not take anything for granted.
• If a format has been given for bids, make sure you stick to it. If there is a word limit, don’t exceed it- they will do a word count!  Make sure the document is easy to read and well presented in a logical format. It will then be easier for them to see how you meet the specification, and therefore allocate the points you deserve.
• Make sure you are giving them what they want.

Costing your bid

There are two distinct stages to costing your tender.

Stage 1: understand the full costs of service delivery

First, you need to be clear about the full costs of delivering your service. It is essential that you include all relevant overheads in your calculations and do not just count the direct or marginal costs involved.

Stage 2: decide how to price your service for the bid

You may decide to subsidise a service initially to be more competitive (known as a 'loss leader’) or you may decide to go for a higher profit margin so you can put money into your reserves.

Alternatively, you may decide to price your tender on a full cost recovery basis. Whatever you decide to do, you should know why you are doing it and should make an assessment of the competition and the commissioner’s priorities. For example, you may feel the higher quality and added value you are offering justifies a higher price

Both the Treasury and the Office of the Third Sector support the idea of full cost recovery and it is enshrined in The Compact, but you still need to take account of the realities of the market in which you are competing.

Useful links

• The Finance Hub's tendering and bidding briefing includes a very useful checklist of all of the costs that you should consider.
• Finance Hub guide to full cost recovery
• ACEVO Guide to Full Cost Recovery (this is a paid-for publication)
• Love Your Tender (Children England, 2009) - free downloadable pdfs & £20-30 hard copy. A 64 page practical guide to understanding contracting. The resource includes checklists and useful information to assist with internal action planning to help your organisation to be ready for when that all important tender arrives.

Have your say

Join a discussion about tendering in the Commissioning and procurement forum.