The challenge
The buyer is a social landlord with around 7,500 properties across Suffolk. They ran the cleaning contract in two stages. The first was a pre-selection questionnaire scored on quality alone, and only a limited number of bidders would be invited to tender. Everyone else would never see the tender documents.
Total Clean Services is an established commercial cleaning company, 447 staff, all directly employed, running contracts across the country from a London head office. What they did not have was a base in Suffolk, and the highest weighted question in the tender asked exactly that. How a bidder would reach and respond across a 50-mile radius at any hour of the day or night. A fair question, and it needed a real answer.
Objectives
- Pass the PSQ and get shortlisted.
- Show the buyer we understood the contract from their side of it.
- Show that cover across the Suffolk radius would hold up at any hour.
- Give them a mobilisation plan they could see working, with the TUPE staff transfer handled.
Our approach
Two submissions, four months apart.
Selection
Selection covered both lots, so it had to be read for the whole contract. 127 residential sites across six towns, plus the two office buildings. Four scored questions on method statements, training, absence cover and environmental practice, with contract experience carrying 30% of the score and two redacted method statements to attach. We built the answers around what the specification asked for rather than what Total Clean wanted to say. They got through.
Plan
Twenty documents, 257 pages, read in full. Before writing we built an evidence map against every sub-criterion buried inside the eight questions, and a set of win themes matched to the answers that would carry them.
Brief
We had worked with Total Clean before, so we already had an evidence library. The first job was working out what in it was relevant to this contract and what was not. That left the gaps, and we went back with targeted requests built around them.
Write
Before drafting, we worked through what the buyer would be worried about behind each question. Whether a firm with no local base could really get someone to site at two in the morning. Whether their own staff would notice the cleaners during the working day. Whether the incumbent's three cleaners would transfer cleanly, or leave them with a gap in service and three upset employees.
Every answer was written to show we understood those concerns before setting out how Total Clean would deal with them. Their feedback picked out the mobilisation methodology and its handling of the staff transfer, which were the two answers most directly built on what they were nervous about.
Collate
The mobilisation question required an attached implementation plan, so we built one. Seven stages from pre-mobilisation to go-live, each with dates, a named owner, and the dependencies sitting on the buyer's side rather than assumed away. Everything else went in through the portal, checked against the tender's own compliance conditions before submission.
By the numbers
2
submissions
3
years of work won
3
local jobs protected on transfer
£205k
contract awarded
The result
Total Clean won it, through selection and then through tender. Three years of daily cleaning across two buildings from November 2026, with annual extensions available out to 2031. Three cleaners with service going back to 2015 stayed in their jobs. The buyer named the mobilisation methodology and its management of the staff transfer among the strengths of the bid.
“Working with Evia Consultancy makes the tender process seamless. The response from Tristan is immediate. It took him no time to understand our business, how we work and weave this into the tender response questions. Would highly recommend this company. They really do go the extra mile.”
Ronan · Total Clean Services