Taking the pain out of tendering

May 23 2008 by David Wright, The Journal

THE tendering process can be time-consuming and costly. If you’re in regular contact with the business development and customer liaison side of the industry, the phrase, ‘I’m up to my eyeballs in a tender that has to be submitted next week’ will be familiar.

Add the cost of making a large-scale bid and you have a process which is flawed but rewarding when the hard work comes off.

So those in the business whose jobs it is to put together these bids will welcome three pieces of recent news.

The first is an agreement which will also please those who hold the purse strings with an iron grip.

Earlier this month, Education Minister Jim Knight signed off on the results of a review by a major firm of accountants looking into procure- ment for Partnerships for Schools, managers of the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme.

The result was a cut in the total cost of bidding for a typical BSF contract from £10.6m to £7m.

Also looking at the pre- qualification stage is English Partnerships, which has announced proposals to make bidding easier.

EP wants to remove the need to provide the pre-qualification information for every site, allowing bidders to do so on a one-off basis.

In addition, the North East Improvement and Efficiency Partnership, which includes the former North East Centre of Excellence, launched a harmonised set of contract documents to address the fact that every local council’s tender documents used to be different.

These initiatives will continue the drive for efficiency savings and process improvements within the region.

David Wright is interim director of the North East Improvement and Efficiency Partnership.