22 Apr The Different Stages Of Bid Review
The bid review process is an essential step that you must complete before you submit your bid to the buyer.
An effective bid review will critically analyse your responses and assess how well they relate to the key bid criteria, while conducting effective proofreading to fix any spelling errors, grammatical mistakes, and issues with bid structure or writing style.
Bid reviews also help the bid writers by offering a third-party perspective on the responses, allowing them to more easily identify any issues with the bid, and rectify these before the bid is submitted.
In this article, we will outline the different stages of the bid review process and describe what each stage entails.
Stage 1: Assess The Bid On How Well It Will Be Scored By The Buyer
Your review team should first assess the bid on how well it will be scored by the buyer under the Most Economically Advantageous Tender (MEAT) criteria.
The MEAT scoring system is used for analysing the weighting of quality vs cost in a bid, and your MEAT grading should reflect the wants and needs of the buyer.
For example, if the buyer states that they require a cost-effective solution, your bid should focus more on the price scoring aspects, emphasising how you can deliver great value for money at a low cost. Alternatively, if the buyer stresses that they are looking for a high-quality service, your bid should focus more on the quality you can offer.
Under the MEAT system, price and quality factors should be broken down into several areas, which include:
Price Factors
- Your company’s monthly/annual costs
- Itemised costs per unit, e.g. material costs, equipment costs, and service costs including wages
- Estimated annual inflationary increases
- The total costs before and after VAT
Quality Factors
- Technical Ability – e.g. your training and qualifications, previous contracts, and resources etc.
- Service Delivery – Any factors that assist your business in providing a high-quality service, such as good communication, fast responses, and the added value offered
- Support Quality – e.g. customer care and ongoing technical assistance etc.
- Environmental Compliance – Your ability to meet environmental guidelines and green targets
- Social Value – The value that your company will be able to contribute to the local community if you win the bid: e.g. donations to charity, job creation, environmental conservation etc.
Stage 2: Assess How Well The Bid Complies With The Key Bid Criteria
At this point, the review team will assess how well your bid complies with the key bid criteria.
The criteria can include vital aspects such as your compliance with regulations, economic and financial standing (including turnover, accounts, insurance etc.), qualifications and quality management standards, and standard procedures. The written responses should show a clear understanding of the buyer’s wants and needs, and outline how your company can meet these.
If one of your bid responses fails to comply with any of the key bid criteria, this should be raised with the bid writers, and addressed to formulate a more effective bid response.
In addition, the bid reviewers should ensure that all the benefits promised to the buyer in your tender response are measurable and quantifiable, and that clear evidence is included to demonstrate that your company can effectively deliver everything it is offering.
The review team should also check that the questions in the tender document are answered correctly and in full. This includes checking that each element of the question is covered in the response, and that the writer has fully understood the meaning of the question.
If there are any issues with a bid response – or any areas where the bid can be strengthened – the bid reviewers should then raise this with the writers and discuss how to proceed.
Stage 3: Proofreading
The proofreading stage ensures that your bid responses are cohesive, structured, and easy to read – while also identifying any spelling or grammatical errors. Bid responses should be checked for coherence too, because if your buyer is unable to make sense of them, your bid is likely to be discarded.
Next, the reviewer should assess whether the buyer will be able to find the answers to their questions quickly and easily, and whether each section of the bid is professional and well-written.
If the bid response is unclear in any way, the bid review should make suggestions regarding how to improve it. These can include making particular sentences clearer, improving the structure, and checking the flow of the bid.
Using headings and subheadings to break the text into easily digestible chunks, and ensuring the bid is written in a clear and concise style, are other ways to make your bid easier for buyers to read and understand.
Lastly, bid reviewers should check that any evidence (such as data and statistics etc.) included in the bid is up-to-date and correct. This can involve checking through your company accounts and/or the details of past contracts.
Stage 4: Final Sign-Off By Senior Management
Lastly, when the previous stages are completed, your bid should be sent to your senior management team for final sign-off.
These managers should ensure that the bid reflects well upon the company, check that the responses are consistent with the brand identity of the business, and make sure that the bid includes all the relevant information.
Then, when the senior management team is satisfied that the bid and everything in it meets the required standard, your bid is ready to submit to the buyer for consideration!
Want to know more about how to use an effective bid review process to write top-quality bids every time? Contact us!
