If you are a small or large business, you should always include some form of review session when bidding. This is how you can find gaps in your costs, solution, programme plan, and proposal early and avoid rework.
We had a couple of recent bids where some bid team members did not see why we needed to do a review, “I don’t need a review; I will just write my content and pull together the solution by talking to people one on one” However what happened when it came to the governance approval, solution gaps were found, and the solution was not approved, rework was required.
These gaps would have been identified earlier if there had been technical standup sessions every day or every other day. The same is true for bid reviews; how often does your business do a review session with your bid team? Is it just the one at the end to check whether the content is in the response, or is it weekly? There should be multiple review sessions, no matter how small the tender or your business is.
At a minimum, you should conduct:
A kickoff meeting | 2 to 3 days after the tender is released.
Bid catchup meetings every week | This is attended by the key bid team, not all of your technical team. If the bid is quite large, you should have more than one bid catchup a week
Technical standups | The Lead Architect or Contractor’s Rep, etc., runs this with your architects, engineers, or other technical team (depending on the industry) without the wider bid team. Depending on how large your tender depends on how frequent you should have these.
A solution / technical workshop | This runs through the full solution, architecture, service, etc., you will deliver and how it all fits together. Your bid writers, project managers, and sales leads should attend this session so they know what you are delivering, making it easier for them to write the proposal.
Proposal Reviews Bronze, Silver and Gold | These are very important. Bronze is a rough-cut bullet points for how you will answer the question. Silver is a detailed look at your refined answers. This is not a set of bullets for an answer; there should be limited or no gaps in the response. Gold is the final review, checking grammar, spelling, formatting, etc.
Your bid plan should include many more reviews, depending on the tender size, your business, and your industry.
