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Mel Dunn: The Bidding Checklist is critical, but is not enough to pull a tender together. Someone must be allocated the role of this.

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Mel Dunn,
Managing Director of Global Business and Development Solutions.

Please visit www.globizdev.com  for additional information about GBDS and how their services could benefit you.

The Virtual Tender Team – managing a globally dispersed team

Working with professionals from a range of backgrounds, experiences and of course locations is one of the benefits in this game.

These benefits often demand significant planning, in managing communication, during the tendering phase. This is often the case when members of your team are everywhere but ‘here’!

Your ‘future’ team members mat be engaged in ‘current’ activities, be that full-time or short-term contract inputs. But they can be spread around the world, with competing demands on their time.

So what can you do when your team are all around the world, but you need their contribution to prepare a winning tender?

Think about this from a different perspective; think about it from their needs, and that may in fact provide a better result for you. Why not reframe with:

“What do I need to do to make it easy for our technical experts to contribute effectively to our tendering efforts, without impacting on their current workload?”

Ideally there is nothing more valuable than having all players around the table – technical members and bid developers – to brainstorm your approach and methodology and to consider competitors and their approach and team.

But, with a dispersed team and the clock ticking for the tender to be submitted, you need to frame up your response and do advance preparation. And you need this when you request input from your team members.

So, how do you go about framing up your response for this purpose?

Every tender that GBDS works on, we prepare a detailed Bidding Checklist. This checklist addresses core aspects of the tendering process to ensure all team members - technical and business development - are at the same point, including:

• Points of compliance
• Critical dates – agency defined
• Critical dates – our dates by which we want tender sections completed
• Tender structure – agency defined
• Tender structure – what we want it to look like; how we will allocate space; what we will write about
• Roles and responsibilities.

The Bidding Checklist is critical, but is not enough to pull a tender together. Someone must be allocated the role of this. Each tender must have a Bid Owner. And, the Bid Owner could have prepared the Bidding Checklist.

The Bid Owner is critical when your technical team is dispersed. The task includes:

• Ensuring information is provided to the technicians for comment
• Ensuring compliance against requirements
• Following up to ensure comments are received in line with bidding timelines
• Promote brainstorming.

The Bid Owner can also assist team members, and make the whole tendering process as smooth as possible, by allocating tasks, with set deadlines so comments on drafts can be sought and incorporated:

• Does the project have sections of activities so you can ask specific team members to provide input against relevant sections?
• Can team members provide comment with regard to the region of the project? Any new sectoral information? Risks and solutions?

Finally, it is not all hard. There can be benefits to having people in different time zones:

• Is someone near the location of the project – can they do the site visit?
• Manage information so emails go out at close of business each day, which is start of business for someone in another time zone – a real 24-hour day!

Points to consider are:

• Always allocate someone to lead the bidding effort
• Prepare a timetable and allocate responsibilities
• Make it easy for team members to contribute – ask for specific inputs by a definite time
• Provide time for drafts to be reviewed and commented by all.

Tendering activities run to tight timetables. Emotions run hot, at times. So this planning and recognising others’ competing commitments and providing guidance and leadership throughout the tendering process at absolute worst, cannot hurt!

Happy bidding everyone.

4 August 2005

Mel's Archives

Internationalisation of Education – Globalisation or Development - the big picture

Preparing winning CV’s

So what do you do?: The art of promoting yourself

Lateral thinking in tender preparation

Preparation

Getting Involved: So much more needed

Getting involved in the global development market