5 key strategies for successful tenders 

Navigating tenders for complex projects can be daunting, even for experienced project managers.

Throughout the tendering process, there are two key factors that come into play.

Capability and capacity. Capability involves the teams experience and skills, including the type of resources that you have available. Capacity is the amount of resources you have, also linked to a combination of time, quality and cost.

The challenge is being able to balance these and ensure that they are aligned to the project needs. When you’re able to achieve this balance, you’re in a much better position to deliver a predictably smooth project and succeed in your tender.

So, how do you approach a challenging tender?

To address this challenge, our experienced team have identified five key strategies to ensure a predictably smooth foundation for your next tender. 

1. Stakeholder engagement: Building trust through transparency 

The tendering process is not just about the technical solutions. It’s an opportunity to build trust and foster relationships with internal stakeholders (your tender team) and external stakeholders (the client). Engaging stakeholders effectively throughout the tender process can set your bid apart. Here’s how: 

• Proactive information sharing: Share project information transparently with the team, including potential challenges and mitigation strategies. This openness builds trust and demonstrates your proactive approach to project management. 
•  Collaborative decision-making: Involve key stakeholders in critical decision processes to showcase your commitment to inclusive project management. 

2. Team focus: Demonstrating cohesion and expertise 

Your team is your greatest asset in a tender for a major project. Here’s how to showcase the culture of your team and their individual skills and abilities.  

•  Emphasise collaboration: Demonstrate how your team works together and is not just a team of individuals or companies collaborating for the short term. Use examples from past projects where teamwork led to innovative solutions or efficient problem-solving. 
• Highlight cultural fit: Show how your team’s values and working style align with the client’s organisation. This cultural fit can be a significant differentiator for a successful tender. 
• Showcase continuous learning: Outline your plans for ongoing training and professional development, showing how you invest in your team’s growth and project success. Don’t just show how you will meet mandatory tender or government targets – prove how you will provide upskilling and succession planning in key areas of your team. 

Pro tip: In our experience, when there’s a gap in a tender task it’s simply because you don’t have the right person allocated to the task.  Some tasks often require a high level of capability and/or capacity and you need the right person to do it. The key success driver of a project always leads back to people. 

3. Schedule and risk management: Maintaining accountability 

Effective scheduling and risk management are crucial to creating winning tenders. Here’s how to approach this: 

• Implement accountability: Clearly define responsibilities and ensure the team is aware of the required schedule. Use simple to understand tools with traffic light indicators, to track progress, highlight potential delays and escalate issues as required. 
• Balance risks and opportunities: Don’t just focus on risks; identify opportunities as well. This balanced approach shows foresight and a positive outlook, cultivates work winning ideas and is crucial for infrastructure projects with long timelines   
• Data-driven risk assessment: Use data and past experiences to support your risk assessments. This evidence-based approach lends credibility to your mitigation strategies. 

Pro tip: Use simple tracking tools with traffic light indicators to track progress and highlight potential delays. 

4. Creative solutions 

Creative (and perhaps even innovative) solutions can set your tender apart, but they need to be grounded in practicality: 

• Tangible value: Ensure that proposed solutions add clear, measurable value to the infrastructure project. Avoid ‘innovation for innovation’s sake’. The true meaning of innovation is something which has never been done before, which is extremely hard to deliver in your project! Decide if your client wants to see innovation, or the much more likely scenario of industry-best practice, leading-edge or bleeding-edge solutions. 
• Accessible explanations: Use simple, jargon-free language to explain complex concepts. Consider using diagrams and illustrations to convey your methodology, especially for technical aspects of infrastructure projects. 
• Future-Proofing: Demonstrate how your solutions anticipate future trends and challenges in infrastructure development. This forward-thinking approach can be a significant differentiator. 

Pro Tip: Create a timeline showing how your proposed solution builds upon past innovations in infrastructure project management and anticipates future developments. This visual representation can be a powerful tool in your tender. 

5. Quality Assurance: From compliance to excellence 

In infrastructure project management, quality assurance isn’t just about ticking boxes; it’s an opportunity to demonstrate excellence. 

• Proactive issue resolution: Highlight your processes for identifying and resolving issues, before they become problems. This proactive approach showcases your commitment to quality in complex tender and project environments. 
• Continuous improvement: Demonstrate how your QA processes feed into a cycle of continuous improvement. Use examples from past infrastructure tenders where your QA processes led to enhanced outcomes. 
• Compliance is an opportunity: Treat compliance requirements as an opportunity to showcase your attention to detail and commitment to excellence in infrastructure project management. 

Pro Tip or Example: Technology and AI is evolving at a rapid pace. Use technology as a tool to improve quality in your tenders and reporting mechanisms.  

By focusing on these five key strategies, you’re demonstrating that you’re dependable, transparent and collaborative. You will position yourself as a trusted partner, improving your chances of success, while setting your team up for delivering a predictably smooth infrastructure project.  

From project management, technical bid writing, end-to-end bid management services, to sourcing top technical and engineering talent, our pre-contract services team bring a wealth of experience when developing successful tenders. Want to learn more? 

Contact our experienced team here or visit What We Do to learn more about how we can help you secure your next project.