Process

Image credit
Image of Metro Tunnel under construction courtesy of Rail Projects Victoria.

A framework for creating winning tenders

A well-managed tender is more likely to be successful.

Simple, proven processes, underpinned by a robust framework, help ensure your tender starts well, operates smoothly, and delivers with less stress on your people and more confidence for you in the end result.

The right framework, with the right resources in the right places, and the right management of internal and external stakeholders makes it easy to put your tender on the right track and keep it on track until final delivery.

Mijo’s senior tender specialists are able to help you establish the right timeline that works for your business. If your subject matter experts are also working on current projects, we help you define a timeline and a delivery strategy that allows for sustaining Business as Usual.

We work hard to avoid the last-minute rush. A final madcap dash to the deadline gives you no room for error recovery. Working backwards from delivery, our experienced tender response specialists help you set out delivery stages. By stepping out the project, we allow all team members to understand the need to deliver set pieces at set times. This allows them to deliver quality pieces in a timely fashion. It also gives reviewers time to investigate the response and provide timely feedback which helps create an endorsed, stronger, and more engaging proposal.

The best people in the best places.

Mijo’s resourcing experts will work with you to identify what type of specialist you need. People who work closely with your team members and subject matter experts to extract the relevant information and craft them into winning ideas.

Submission Managers or co-ordinators who ensure the strategy is articulated and benefits highlighted in all documents and interim submissions and all deadlines and final submissions are met.

Writers who answer each question in a simple and easily digestible way. Writers who work to understand the thinking behind a response and so make the benefit clear.

Designers who create a document which brings your big promises to life and reveals value at every stage, in every section. Designers who work with writers to determine where words work – and can showcase your smarts – or where an illustration works better.

The simple task of finding the right proof for the relevant claim.

The deeper we can dig, the easier it becomes to create a winning proposal.

We go through existing research and can conduct our own – either through direct consultation with relevant stakeholders or through desktop discovery.
In each case, we seek to discover what you have, which is of benefit to your client, and helps prove their benefit to their end-user.

We then turn the research into compelling, winning content for each section of the response.

Stakeholder engagement and management are vital ingredients for successful project delivery. Our Director, Joanna Stepp, is a highly regarded specialist in stakeholder management and community engagement.

She has a wealth of experience in this area and can:

  • Advise on successful management methodologies for the project
  • Manage Stakeholder relationships throughout the project
  • Provide subject matter expertise
  • Act as the Stakeholder Director/Manager during mobilisation of a project
  • Manage Stakeholders in the first 6-12 months of the life of the project.

Joanna advises on, or creates a management framework which sets out end-to-end, best-for-project stakeholder management processes.

Mijo Tenders can further assist by:

  • Creating and writing an integrated tender response that describes the approach for conducting Stakeholder and community engagement
  • Developing and writing Stakeholder and community engagement management plans
  • Providing Stakeholder and community engagement advice during project management
  • Developing communications and engagement plans.

Internal stakeholder management to deliver a winning response

Stakeholder management is an ever-changing landscape. Different stakeholders have differing amounts of influence at different times throughout a project. Each has different pressures on them, from their stakeholders.

By understanding their pressures, and their required contributions to the project, we find processes which enable each to work collaboratively on commonly agreed goals, with commonly agreed engagement processes.

Collectively, these processes underpin a united approach to a successful tender response.

External stakeholder management for successful ongoing implementation

A tailored response must address the real issues of all stakeholders. Most importantly, it must create a working methodology everyone is happy with. A methodology which gives key stakeholders a relevant voice at a relevant time, and which also supports project completion within defined timelines.

Successful external stakeholder management starts with research and analysis.

This can be conducted and supplied by the client, or it may require additional research to uncover unique insights.

These insights then help in the creation of highly effective community and stakeholder engagement plans.

Each project needs relevant internal deadlines which allow timely review and relevant improvement of the response.

As part of our management strategy and ongoing project management, Mijo can help you set up relevant review periods. These allow for review by external and internal reviewers (where needed), and still allow progress on the proposal while the review is being conducted.

Tender responses for major projects ask many questions and seek a substantial number of written pages. Each response page must describe how you can meet or exceed each of the many requirements demanded by the proposal.

Your corporate capability, past submissions and document library can be valuable assets if properly curated.

This treasure-trove of information can be leveraged in advance of a likely time-pressured response to a large tender. Having an organised depository of information and past submissions gives you more time to identify and sell the specific benefits of your proposal.

Valuable corporate artefacts can include:

  • A library of past responses
  • Up to date corporate capability documents
  • Easily searchable content to leverage for new proposals
  • Up to date team member resumés
  • Relevant experience identified for each team member to identify the people with the experience and skills required by the tender
  • A dossier outlining the business benefits of specific approaches, including recent innovations, bespoke techniques and proven legacy methodologies, which provide compelling descriptions your people can add specific details to
  • Documents written in a single voice – for a coherent proposal.

Mijo Tenders can assist by:

  • Selectively filling skill gaps in the expertise of your team from submission managers, to writers and graphic designers
  • Working collaboratively to support your team members by merging our communication and tender response skills with your team’s specific subject matter knowledge
  • Leveraging our team’s communication skills. These include Management Plans, Mobilisation documents, Safety Plans, Executive Summaries, Corporate Capability, Tender Responses that tell a story, identifying the business and operational benefits, and collectively addressing all the RFT questions.
  • Establishing pragmatic versioning, filing, naming and reviewing methods to enhance consistency and facilitate later library storage and retrieval.