How to write a tender: The Complete Guide

It’s safe to say that tendering is a great opportunity to develop your business, providing services for the public sector. With over 150 tenders uploaded to our 10 portals each day, there is an opportunity for every business – including yours.

Once you’ve found your opportunity, you’re going to want to make sure you maximise it. So, in this blog, I’m going to run through how to write a tender properly. 

Don’t just jump in

One of the more exhaustive, yet essential processes before writing a tender is to make sure you know what you’re writing about – not to mention this process is often overlooked by many taking on tendering for the first time.

Yes, it’s easy to quickly jump in and try and answer the question in front of you without a moment’s hesitation, but this can quickly snowball into missed requirements and drafting something that doesn’t answer the question.

More often than not, those who are new to tendering can often end up ensconced in their own echo chamber – putting down the answer to the question they think the evaluator should be asking, not what they’re actually looking for.

This approach to writing a tender will, more often than not, score poorly.

Know what you’re writing about

Before you start writing – make sure you can actually fulfil the criteria as set out in the specification, avoiding wasted time. Consider:

• Do you meet the minimum financial criteria?
• Can you feasibly meet the requirements of the buyer?
• Do you have the required accreditations and memberships?
• Do you possess the relevant experience to undertake the contract?

From here, you can make a bid/no-bid decision – if you can’t meet the likes of the above, you’re likely to be excluded from the process altogether or end up scoring poorly.

PQQs/SQs

So now we can get into how to actually write a tender. So, we’ve evaluated the specification, and now we’re ready to tackle the submission.

PQQs or pre-qualification questionnaires (or sometimes referred to as selection questionnaires) typically ask questions regarding what you have done in the past previously and are used as the first stage of selection, as part of the restricted tender procedure – open procedure tenders seldom use PQQs.

As discussed in the previous point, we are going to want to explain how our experience makes us suitable for delivering the contract.

Typically, completing a PQQ involves:

• Filling in basic company information, such as registration numbers
• Confirming that you haven’t breached legislation, or became a James Bond villain overnight
• Technical and professional ability – or case studies (see next section)
• A declaration and contact details

Some PQQs are different than others, however, this is the typical process. Some PQQs, such as PAS91s in the construction sector, consist of several additional sections, which often entails a far more detailed, evidence-based approach.

Case studies

Normally included in the PQQ section under ‘Technical and Professional Ability’, case studies ask you to describe 2-3 contracts of a similar nature that you have completed, or are currently undertaking, in the past five years.

These case studies are an opportunity to sell yourself and demonstrate previous successes, and how you can bring similar results for buyers.

With word counts typically within the 500-word mark, you could consider:

• What is the scale of the contract? For example, how many properties do you renovate within a given period?
• What is the nature of the relationship? How did this start?
• How did we mobilise and deliver the contract?
• Have you had any key challenges, and how have we learnt from them?
• To summarise, what are the results? Did you finish on-time and within budget, and has the contract been renewed or extended?

ITT section

Now we move to the ITT section. This is where knowing how to write a tender will come in handy, as this is the proposal section. This is what we WILL do.

Typically, questions in a tender may cover the likes of:

• Quality management
• Health and safety
• Environment and sustainability
• Social value
• Mobilisation
• Service delivery
• Experience
• Complaints handling
• Continuous improvement
• Supply chain and subcontractor management

Deconstruct the question

Tender questions are often made up of several key points which a buyer will want you to address, with marks distributed equally across each section. Consequently, to maximise your marks, you should always deconstruct the question in such a way that all points are addressed. Let’s look at this example:

The principal contractor must provide details of how you propose to manage your sub-contractors and supply chain (including placement of orders to ensure appropriate lead times).

In your response, please include details on the below:

• Provide 2 examples of a problem which occurred completing similar work and how did you overcome this?
• Provide 2 examples of problems you have faced with sub-contractors in the past and how did you overcome this?

So – let’s deconstruct this one. The bold sections are the mini-questions, shall we say, which should inform our structure. Note, the buyer has been kind to us on this one also, with some bullet points to point out some other points they want to see covered.

We could, therefore, adopt the following headings and subheadings:

• Management of our subcontractors and supply chain
• Placement of orders to ensure appropriate lead times
• Problems occurring during similar work
• Problems with subcontractors

As such, this clearly highlights to the buyer that we have addressed each point of the question, making their life easier. Not to mention it makes sure we cover the points they’re asking!

Find more tips in the full blog.