The challenge
A North East college group needed the floor in its sports hall taken out and replaced over the summer. The old sprung system removed and disposed of, a premium replacement laid on a new cradle and batten sub-structure, and eight court markings across five sports, every one of them conforming to the relevant governing body. Finished and handed over before term started.
The scoring made it unforgiving. Eight scored quality answers, each of which had to reach a minimum standard, and a single answer below that standard rejected the whole bid regardless of everything else in it. Quality carried 70% of the award. There were eight separate ways to lose before price was ever reached.
The client was new to us, with nothing on file. Every fact in the bid had to be found before it could be written.
Objectives
- Clear the minimum on all eight answers, because one miss ended the bid.
- Show the college we understood what a summer deadline means when the students come back in September.
- Prove the flooring system met the specification on measured performance.
- Show the work could be delivered on a live campus without getting in the way.
Our approach
Plan
Six tender documents read in full, down to the sub-floor tolerances and the court layout requirements. Before writing we built an evidence map against every sub-criterion inside the eight questions, and a set of win themes matched to the answers that would carry them.
Brief
There was no client evidence on file, so the questionnaire was built backwards from the answers. Each scored sub-criterion was worked out first, then we asked for exactly what it needed. Any extra information or evidence we needed while writing was picked up on a call, so we worked around the people running the business instead of adding to their week.
Write
Before drafting, we worked through what the college would be worried about behind each question. Whether the hall would actually be ready for the first week of term, or still be a building site. Whether a contractor working on a live campus over the summer would be safe around the people still on it. Whether a floor sold on a twenty-five year warranty would still be sound in year twenty.
Every answer was written to show we understood those concerns before setting out how the work would be done. Where the specification named a premium product and then allowed an equivalent, the answer proved equivalence with measured performance figures against the standard rather than claiming it.
Check
Two rounds of review against the scoring criteria before anything was signed off. No vague claims, and every commitment we made was one the company could actually back up.
By the numbers
70%
of the award decided on quality
8
scored answers, all above the minimum
5
governing bodies to satisfy
£90k
contract
The result
The contract was won. Every one of the eight scored answers cleared the minimum, on a job where a single miss would have rejected the bid outright and where quality decided most of the award.