Almost 20 years ago, I got my first taste of tendering. I was working in law firms and IT companies, and tendering was starting to become a common procurement practice.

At the time, most people working in tendering were employed as marketing, business development or sales people, and when a tender landed on a desk it got shuffled their way. In general, the approach was simple, with small teams compiling small documents, to unsophisticated clients on straight-forward requests for quotes.

About 10 years ago, I started working on construction and infrastructure major project and PPP tenders and to this day this is still a passion of mine. By that time, tenders were mainstream procurement methodology but it was still a new field of professionalism. I was calling myself a Tender Coach as this seemed to best describe the mix of strategy, writing and production that I would manage, and in fact I was a pioneer creating a new niche.

My first PPP was the NSW Schools PPP which was valued at about $120M. Our bid team had about 5 or 6 people at its core and we produced a submission that was just 1 volume plus some attachments. The requirements and questions of the RFP were simple, but the workload was significant, especially with such a small bid team with limited experience. We were inventing the wheel and it was a lot of effort and we were unsophisticated in our approach. It was a matter of routine for us to work 18 hour days, 7 days per week, and finish with 3 days without sleep.

About 5 years ago is when I would say the tendering industry had its heyday. By this stage, tendering was very common and there were countless major projects up for grabs around Australia. We worked on defence, rollingstock, rail, tunnels, toll roads, bridges, hospitals, ports… virtually every form of social infrastructure, in every state and territory, and jobs were commonly quoted at $10B+.

The size and significance of the jobs lead to a ‘win at all costs’ mentality among the tenderers. But more importantly, the level of detail required was unbelievable. It was typical for a tender to require as many as 30 schedules to be answered and for the submission to require dozens of specific operational and management plans.

The combination of ‘win at all costs’ with the complexity of the deals lead to huge dedicated bid teams. We frequently had as many as 200-300 people co-located together working for as long as a year or more on the RFP and various bid phases. The biggest tender I worked on resulted in 100 volumes PER SET, and we delivered 10 sets. That’s 1000 volumes of documentation! And the bid deliverables had every bell and whistle you could imagine to convince the client that they were the right choice for the job.

The best part about this time was that we had enough experience to drive some really smooth project management in tendering. Our best practice methodologies started to emerge and get some runs on the board so that we didn’t need 3 nights without sleep. And with larger teams and longer time frames, we could raise the standard for strategic thinking, content development, critical reviews, creative presentations, etc. We achieved some amazing results that I am really proud of, even to this day.

But the worst part about this time was that some clients would expect the tenderers had to take enormous unnecessary risk and bare enormous unnecessary cost. I know that the potential upside was huge and tenderers took on the costs and risks willingly, but it still seems a bit unfair. I worked on several tenders where the client was umming and ahhing about whether they would proceed with the project at all; and another tender where the client couldn’t decide between spec 1 and spec 2 so asked everyone to bid for both. This lack of commitment and clarity from the clients lead to a lot of companies losing a lot of money and a lot of people investing a lot of their own personal passion and effort, just to be wasted. There were a lot of burned fingers from these experiences and it caused a turning point for the industry.

Which brings us to where we are now. There are still a lot of major tenders up for grabs, but bidders have been badly burned.

Tenderers are now being much more selective on which tenders they bid. If there is ambiguity from the client, ‘No’. If there will be 3 or more shortlisted tenderers, ‘No’. If there is an unreasonable expectation for the tenderer to carry the risk, ‘No’. If there is too much risk carried on one balance sheet, ‘No’… And if they do proceed, tenderers are forming bigger consortiums to spread their risk and embracing international players into their mix to attract innovation and efficiency. They have learnt their lessons well.

From a budgeting perspective, clients have tightened their belts (almost to the point of suffocation?). Everyone wants more for less and they are taking a ruthlessly pragmatic approach. They are cutting corners, cutting the size of the team, focussing on compliance… It is an understandable situation given the history. And for now, while everyone seems to be in the same space, we’re all competing on an even playing field. It will be interesting to see where we get to a few years further down the track.

I think we’ll see a continued tightening around the ‘production’ side of tendering, so that tendering becomes less onerous for the teams. For example, hopefully we’ll manage to reduce the documentation needed in tenders, maybe down to 15-20 volumes. This will be possible if we can reduce the amount of ‘risk covering’ documentation, such as management plans and operational documentation, which can all be provided as part of the actual project delivery (not as part of the competitive tender).

I also think we’ll see more interactive processes which help a client assess which team they want to work with because of their partnership approach and creative thinking capabilities.
And we’ll continue to see the globalisation of teams, with more global partners being involved and also the off-shoring of more and more elements of the work.

The irony is, the easier it becomes to submit a tender, the harder it becomes to win it. Whatever happens, I know for sure that the key to winning tenders will still be in the strategy. And no matter how large or small, how simple or complex, how low cost or big budget a tender is, you still have to WIN it.

Leann Webb