A bid plan should be a core part of any bid professional’s arsenal and is one of the simplest ways to improve not only the quality of your submissions but the consistency of your approach across all of your bid submissions. It helps to bring structure to a process that should never be rushed or reactive, and helps to keep SMEs and contributors across your organisation informed of the progress of your bid submission. Without it, deadlines slip, contributors run the risk of being silo’d, and clarification questions can even be missed.
Public procurement runs to strict timescales and if you miss the submission deadline all of your efforts will go to waste, which means that suppliers need to manage their side of the process carefully to ensure everything is completed in good time. A good bid plan does not need to be complicated, but it does need to give your team visibility, ownership and control.
What is a bid plan?
A bid plan is the working document that helps you manage the tender from release to submission. At its best, it acts like a project plan for the bid which shows what needs to be done, who owns it, when it needs to happen, where the risks are, and what still needs to be chased. It should help your team answer five basic questions:
- What are we submitting?
- Who is doing what?
- What are the key deadlines?
- What still needs input, evidence or review?
- Where are the risks?
If the answer to any of those is unclear halfway through a live tender, the bid plan is either missing or not doing its job.
Why a bid plan matters:
Bids fail for operational reasons as often as content reasons, sometimes the writing is weak but often the real issue is poor coordination:
- the wrong person is briefed too late
- pricing assumptions are not locked down
- reviews are squeezed into the last day
- clarifications are not tracked properly
- mandatory attachments are missed
- the final submission is rushed
Not only does it reduce risk, but when it is used properly it saves valuable time as teams have one central place to check on progress, identify gaps, and make key decisions needed to advance the bid. If a bid has multiple contributors, then a bid is a mandatory document needed for oversight and control. At a basic level your bid plan needs to capture the essentials of the opportunity such as:
- tender title
- buyer name
- contract term
- contract value
- sector / service line
- submission deadline
- clarification deadline
- submission method
- key contacts
- evaluation split
- lot structure, if relevant
This summary is integral to ensuring it gives all contributors sufficient context to understand what they need to feed into and why that matters. It also gives senior reviewers and SMEs the overview they need without necessarily reading the entire tender pack line-by-line.
Bid Workload Summary
Bid/ITT Overview
| Tender title | |
|---|---|
| Organisation name | |
| Buyer/Commissioner | |
| Sector | |
| New/existing contract for client | |
| Lots, if applicable | |
| Contract term | |
| Contract value | |
| Minimum financial threshold | |
| Quality evaluation | |
| Commercial evaluation | |
| Services to deliver |
Key Dates / Milestones
| Kick-off call | |
|---|---|
| Clarification deadline | |
| Supplier briefings | |
| Submission deadline | |
| Evaluation of responses | |
| Presentation / interview | |
| Contract award | |
| Contract commencement |
Bid Team
| Role | Name | Key | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bid writer / manager | |||
| Deputy writer | |||
| Lead reviewer | |||
| Lead client contact | |||
| Secondary client contact | |||
| Lead client reviewer |
Win Themes
| 1 | |
|---|---|
| 2 | |
| 3 | |
| 4 |
Submission Details
| Submission method | |
|---|---|
| Portal name | |
| Online portal link | |
| Username | |
| Password |
Response Requirements
| Preformatted or design required? | |
|---|---|
| Special instructions | |
| Response format | |
| Naming convention |
Bid Risks
| 1 | |
|---|---|
| 2 | |
| 3 | |
| 4 | |
| 5 | |
| 6 | |
| 7 | |
| 8 | |
| 9 | |
| 10 |
Key Terminology
Build your timeline early
The timeline of your bid submission is the backbone, and this is where many teams go wrong. Instead of starting on day 1 of your timeline and planning forward they often start at the deadline and work backwards which runs the risk of not leaving enough time for:
- document review
- clarification questions
- storyboarding
- contributor input
- drafting narrative responses
- pricing
- review of quality and commercial responses
- final quality check
- upload and submission
If you do not plan ahead and plan early, a six-week tender timeline can quickly turn into a two-day panic where corners are cut, and potentially crucial mistakes are made.
Instead, you should break your bid into key stages with dates assigned to each stage, such as:
- kick-off and document review
- bid/no-bid decision
- clarification log created
- storyboard complete
- contributor briefings issued
- first drafts due
- reviews completed
- final approval
- upload and submission
It’s important to note that this is not a prescriptive process but should accurately represent how your organisation actually works in a structured and documented way.
Be clear on ownership
Key to the success of your implemented bid plan is that every single task within the bid should have a dedicated owner, a named individual who has access to the bid plan and is aware of what has been assigned to them and when it needs to be completed. This includes:
- bid lead
- writer
- reviewer
- pricing lead
- operational/SME input owner
- policy/compliance owner
- final sign-off owner
Without clear ownership for all elements that need completed within the bid return, you run the risk of a bid drifting from your self-imposed timeline and creep towards the contracting authority’s deadline.
Track clarification questions properly
A detailed clarification log should always sit inside your bid plan rather than as a separate document, as your bid plan needs to be a one-stop-shop to keep all contributors of how a bid progresses through each stage. You need to have a dedicated space within your bid plan where you can track:
- what was raised
- when it was raised
- reference number
- who raised it
- who needs to action the answer
- whether the answer has been reflected in the submission
This is particularly important when a clarification can impact how you proceed with how you write, structure or price your tender response. If you don’t capture questions and answers centrally for all contributors to see, you run the risk of certain members continuing against old assumptions.
Clarification Question (CQ) Management
| CQ date issued | CQ Ref. | Question | Response | Raised by | Workstream applicable | CQ owner | Actioned (Y/N) | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15/11/2024 | 1.1 | ABC | XYZ | Other Bidder | Bid Team | Joe Bloggs | Yes | |
| No | ||||||||
Use a submission matrix
A submission matrix is a key to ensuring that strong document control is maintained at every stage of the bid process, as well as ensuring you are submitting the correct version of every document as part of your tender response. Your submission matrix should confirm:
- what the document is
- who owns it
- what format it needs to be in
- whether it needs a signature
- whether it is final
- whether it has been uploaded
This is particularly valuable when you are dealing with complex bid responses which include:
- multiple attachments
- certificates
- policies
- pricing files
- signed declarations
- separate quality responses
- financial information
- appendices
The very best bids are not entirely about writing the very best bid responses, it’s about ensuring every single element of your tender response is to the highest possible quality, full compliant suite of documentation which fully aligns to the buyer’s requirements.
Submission Matrix
| Document | Sections of document | Owner | Completion date | Document format for upload | Signature required (Y/N) | Uploaded / finalised (Y/N) | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Add a quality tracker
When you have a tender submission which has a significant amount of quality questions, it is important that you have a facility in place which is able to effectively track these as they progress through the various review stages. A solid quality tracker should always include:
- question reference
- owner
- word count
- weighting
- status
- review stage
- evidence needed
- scoring ambition / risks anticipated
Once you start capturing each of the above for each question you can quickly, efficiently and at-a-glance track:
- which questions are lagging
- which responses are still waiting for input
- where evidence is thin
- whether reviews are happening in time
- whether effort is aligned to weightings
The last point above is significant as your team should not be spending 20% of their time answering a response which only has a weighting of 2% for example.
Quality Tracker
| Q Ref. | Question / section | Weight | Word limit | Owner | Specification ref. | Status | Information required | Highest scoring mechanism |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Methodology | 5% | 3,000 | DH | Section 1.3–1.12 | Peer Review | 5 – Exceptional understanding and innovative processes included | |
| Not Started | ||||||||
| First Draft | ||||||||
| Revisions | ||||||||
| Final Review | ||||||||
| Complete |
Quality Progress Tracker
Keep a live risk log
Every single bid will have a wide range of risks which range from quality, commercial, compliance, resource and even reputational risks. A simple bid risk log should capture:
- the risk
- the owner
- the likely impact
- the mitigation
- the deadline for action
Typical bid risks include:
- missing operational input
- unclear pricing assumptions
- late review windows
- limited evidence
- conflicting tender documents
- portal access issues
- dependency on a single contributor
- unresolved TUPE questions
- weak case studies for a key area
The key purpose of a risk log is to ensure that obvious issues do not drift into the later stages where you quickly run out of time to resolve key risks or further clarify with the buyer if there are still elements of the specification that are unclear for example.
Risk Log
| Date raised | Owner of risk | Risk | Impact rating | Mitigation | Date signed off by risk owner |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15/10/2024 | Joe Bloggs | High | |||
| Medium | |||||
| Low | |||||
Common bid planning mistakes
A few mistakes come up again and again, especially if you are not using the above tools to your advantage throughout the entirety of the tender process:
- Starting the plan too late: If you only build the bid plan once drafting has started, you are already behind.
- Making it too complicated: If the plan is too detailed to maintain, the team will stop using it.
- Not updating it: A bid plan is only useful if it reflects the live position.
- Using it as a solo document: It should support the whole team, not sit with the bid manager only.
- Failing to build in review time: Review is not what happens if time allows, it needs to be planned from the start.
Final thoughts
A good bid plan does not write the tender for you, but what is does do is create and maintain control, giving you and your team shared view of the work, helping to ensure people contribute at the right time, reduce avoidable mistakes, and improve the chances of submitting a strong, complete bid.
If you are struggling internally with managing complex bids that require careful management, oversight and leadership, the Evolve Network Group is well-placed to provide the expertise needed to ensure that you provide not only a compliant response but one that is of the highest possible quality across the board which maximises your chances of success. Contact us today for a free no obligation consultation on how we can help you plan and manage your next bid or tender response.
