Tender Response Process

Neroli

My Q relates to the tender response process, in particular the assignment of tasks and time required to complete.

I am starting to work on tender preparation in a small IT company and would like to have a rough guideline of how much time and how many people should I expect to allocate to this process. Looking at pre-qualification questionnaires and RFT documents on eTenders I see that they look for quite a lot of information from technical competency to company infrastructure, quality control etc.

Is there a general way that tender response tasks are assigned e.g. company information is prepared by one person, spec and pricing is allocated by the technical or financial dept. And how long does tender preparation normally take from initial receipt of documents to submission if working solidly on this? (I know the scale and scope of the tender is the main factor to consider.)
I know the rewards for winning tenders can be huge but I need to get an idea of how much time/ effort to expect to put into the process to help gauge if a job is worth pursuing.

Any advice of experience shared is appreciated!
Thanks, Neroli

greener&leaner

The documents for each tender tend to be very similar to each other. The most difficult and the longest tender you do is the first one.

How long the first one takes is like asking how long is a piece of string.
Is the marketing material up to date and up to scratch?
Do you have project descriptions, photos etc. available to hand.
Do you have decent technical descriptions prepared?
Do you have CVs for all staff members?
Do you have a long format CV for all staff members which covers EVERYTHING they've ever done so you can cut and paste the relevant stuff?
Do you have good financial break downs available of how your business costs tot up per hour you're working on something?
Do you have the costs of everything external to hand?

If you can get your systems in order then putting the actual tenders together shouldn't take long.

As for how long it should take to give you the best return on time, you're just going to have to crunch your own numbers I'm afraid. If you know how much your own and other peoples time costs per hour (salary + overheads) you can work out the rough cost to the business of preparing the tender and compare it to a) how likely you are to win it and b) your profit margin.

Once you've done a few tenders (not the first one!) you'll have a very good idea of how long it should take from just reading the guidelines. Even if you rough out what you have to do now and how long you think it'll take you'll have a good idea of the overall cost.

As for putting it together, depends on how your business is structured. One person needs to take overall responsibility, but the people with the expertise should do their bit. There's nothing more dangerous than you assuming something will take 5 days that will take 5 weeks. Who ends up doing the work usually just came down to who had the time and the relevant knowledge.

Good luck!
I know what a nightmare that form filling can be.

Neroli

Thanks greener & leaner.

Yes I do have most of the information you refer to.
I have complied a few tenders so far, working with one other person who provided the technical recommendation and associated pricing (which I have to input and co-ordinate into the tender).

I'm finding that whilst the information requested is not necessarily difficult to source or write freshly;
preparing the document format exactly as the buyer requests, inputing product details & pricing and checking & changing prices is quite time consuming.

For a tender worth we'll say €150,000 in equipment and installation it could take me 2 -3 days to put together (and I'm careful to address all points) if solely working on it. I don't know if this is average or the norm, if I'm spending too long on the submission or being too particular about detail......It's not like I can ask competitors!

itsmine

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