The bid management process: roles, planning and a fixed way of working for small businesses

What is bid management?

Bid management, also called tender management, is organising a bid: who does what, when it must be ready and with which material. It is not about the content of your offer, but about the process that decides whether that content reaches the buyer on time, complete and at its best.

For a small business, this is no luxury. Bids are often written by people who also run the company or lead projects. Without a fixed way of working, most of the time goes into searching and coordinating: where is that reference, who writes what, when were the questions due? That time is taken from the writing.

A fixed way of working does not improve a single sentence. It gives you the time to do that yourself.

The eight stages of the bid management process

A European public tender and a private tender go through the same stages. Only the rules differ.

1. 1SpottingSee the opportunity in time. On TenderNed, the Dutch national tender platform, you can set up an interest profile, and prior information notices and buyers’ procurement calendars sometimes give you an early signal. For a private tender, the signal usually comes through your network or a client.
2. 2Bid/no-bidDecide whether to bid, on facts rather than gut feeling. How to organise that is covered in bid or no-bid. In a European tender, decide provisionally first, and finally after the clarification round.
3. 3AnalysisList the requirements, award criteria, formal requirements and deadlines. Mark what is unclear and what you cannot meet.
4. 4QuestionsAsk your questions before the deadline in the tender documents. In a European tender in the Netherlands, all questions and answers are published in the clarification round, called the nota van inlichtingen, visible to all bidders.
5. 5WritingOne owner per award criterion, with the question and the scoring guidance next to it. The estimator works on the price at the same time.
6. 6ReviewingTwo fixed review points, by someone who did not write the text.
7. 7SubmittingEverything signed by the right person and uploaded on your internal deadline. Make sure more than one person has a TenderNed account, so a colleague can submit if you are unavailable. What to check in the last days is covered in the final week before submission.
8. 8Reviewing the outcomeAfter the award decision, whether you lost or won. What did you learn, and what do you take to the next tender?

A private tender has no statutory time limits, and often no formal question round. So ask at the start how and until when you can ask questions, and whether a presentation follows the proposal. Put those moments in your plan straight away.

Which roles does a bid team need?

A role is not the same as a job. You do not need six people, but you do need six responsibilities, each assigned to someone.

• DecisionThe ownerMakes the bid/no-bid decision, keeps sight of why you want to win this contract and sets the price. In a small business, usually the managing director or owner.
• CoordinationThe bid manager or bid coordinatorMakes the plan, divides the work and guards the deadlines. Does not write everything, but always knows where things stand.
• ContentWriters and subject expertsThe people who know the work, such as a project manager or specialist. They supply the content per award criterion, even if someone else finishes the text.
• PriceThe estimatorWorks out the price, fills in the price form and checks that the price matches what the text promises.
• CheckThe reviewerReads like an evaluator: is every question answered, part by part, and is it convincing? Never reviews their own text.
• SignatureThe signatorySigns the forms and the bid, and must be authorised to sign as registered with the KvK, the Dutch Chamber of Commerce. Make sure this person is available when signatures are needed.

Do you need a bid manager in a small team?

Not as a job, but as a role. Someone has to keep the overview and guard the plan, even if that is the managing director. With few people you combine roles. That works, as long as you know which combinations are risky.

• One or two peopleThe director does almost everythingDecision maker, coordinator, writer and estimator in one. Bring someone else in for the review, from operations or from your network. A second reader sees what you no longer see.
• Three to five peopleOne coordinatorGive coordination to one person, for example a sales manager or sales support. The director decides and reviews, the subject experts write their own criteria.

Always avoid the writer who reviews their own text. And if the decision maker also coordinates, ask someone from operations to look at the bid/no-bid decision. Whoever drives the bid often wants it to go ahead a little too much.

If everyone is responsible for the plan, no one is.

How do you build a bid timeline?

You build a bid timeline by planning backwards from the deadline. First set the dates that are fixed, then the ones you choose yourself.

The fixed dates are in the tender documents: the deadline for questions, the expected date of the clarification answers and the deadline for bids. In a European open procedure in the Netherlands, the Dutch Public Procurement Act (Aanbestedingswet 2012) sets a time limit for bids of at least 45 days from the date the contract notice was sent. If the buyer accepts electronic submission, as on TenderNed, it may be 40 days (articles 2.71 and 2.74b). That is longer than the minimum in the EU directive. Questions asked in time must be answered no later than ten days before the deadline (article 2.54). If that does not happen, or if the buyer changes the documents significantly, the deadline must be extended (article 2.73).

The dates you choose: your provisional decision, an internal deadline for questions, two reviews and an internal deadline three to four days before the real one. Put a name next to each date.

If the time limit is too tight for the size of the contract, ask for an extension in the question round. When setting time limits, the buyer must take into account the complexity of the contract and the time you need to prepare your bid.

When planning backwards, also watch the deadline for objections to the tender documents. Dutch tender documents often set one, and it usually ends before the bid deadline. Under what Dutch courts call the Grossmann rule, if you let it pass, you usually cannot take an objection you already knew about to court after the award decision.

Found a mistake after uploading? Until the deadline you can usually still put it right. The tender documents say how that works for this tender. That is one more reason to upload on your internal deadline.

What belongs in a bid library?

For every tender you look up the same things. A bid library makes sure you record them properly once, and then only keep them up to date. Keep facts in it, not ready-made texts.

• ProfileWho you are and what you doServices, region, organisation and what sets you apart, with figures you can back up.
• ReferencesThe facts per contractClient, period, size, what you did, the result and a contact person. More in references.
• PeopleCVs that are currentPer key person: education, certificates and projects. Update a CV when a project ends, not when the tender arrives.
• EvidenceCertificates and statements with expiry datesCertificates, insurance policies, a Gedragsverklaring Aanbesteden (the Dutch certificate of conduct for tenders), a KvK extract. Some are only valid for a limited time. Record the expiry date of each document, and check that it is still valid on the bid deadline.
• LessonsWhat you learned per tenderScores, the buyer’s reasons and what you will do differently next time.

In a European tender you fill in the ESPD, the European Single Procurement Document (UEA in Dutch): a self-declaration that you are not in an exclusion situation, that you meet the selection criteria and that you can provide the supporting documents without delay on request. Before the award, the buyer asks the bidder it intends to award the contract to for those documents. You may reuse an ESPD from an earlier procedure, as long as you confirm that the information is still correct.

Why no standard texts? Because a text that fits every buyer makes the difference for none of them. Start every tender from the question, and take the facts from your bid library. More in why Atvalio does not write generic texts.

Keep the facts, not the sentences.

How do you review a bid after the award?

Plan a short review with everyone who worked on the bid straight after the award decision, whether you lost or won. Discuss the outcome and the process.

For the outcome you need information from the buyer. In a European tender, the award decision is followed by a standstill period of at least 20 calendar days, during which you can ask for an explanation. If you submitted an admissible bid, you can also ask in writing for the characteristics and relative advantages of the winning bid. The buyer must then answer no later than 15 days after your request. How to analyse the reasons is covered in after the award decision. In a private tender, ask the client yourself what made the difference.

1. 1Where were the points lost?Your score per criterion next to the winner’s, with the reasons given.
2. 2Was the decision right?What would you have wanted to know at the decision that you did not know then?
3. 3Did the plan hold?Which date slipped, and why? Was there enough time for both reviews?
4. 4What goes into the bid library?A reference that can be better, a missing CV, a lesson about this buyer. Record it before everyone is back to the day job.