Writing your first bid response

You have found an opportunity, passed your own bid or no-bid check, and downloaded the pack. What follows is a craft with learnable rules. Most first bids fail on process and question discipline, not on the quality of the underlying business, and both are fixable.

First, read everything

An ITT pack typically contains the specification, the instructions to bidders, the evaluation criteria and weightings, the pricing schedule, the draft contract terms, and a questionnaire covering exclusion grounds and your financial and technical standing. Read all of it before writing anything, in one sitting if you can, and note as you go:

• every question you must answer, its word or page limit, and its weighting;
• every document you must attach (certificates, accounts, policies, references);
• every deadline: clarification cut-off, submission time, and any presentation stage;
• anything in the draft contract you could not live with, such as liability caps, payment terms or service credits.

Then build a simple compliance checklist and a timetable working back from the deadline. Aim to finish a full draft several days early. Portals reject late submissions automatically; there is no appeal, however good the excuse or the bid.

Use the clarification window

Every tender has a period for clarification questions, asked anonymously through the portal, with answers published to all bidders. Use it. If the specification is ambiguous, if two documents contradict each other, if a requirement seems disproportionate, ask early and politely. Buyers routinely correct genuine problems, and the answers often reveal what the buyer really cares about. Never rely on an assumption where a question was possible; "we assumed" is the preface to most scoring disasters.

Answer the question asked

This is the heart of bid writing, and the most common failure. Evaluators score your answer against the published criteria for that question, and nothing else. Text that does not address the question earns no marks, however impressive.

• Deconstruct each question. A question asking how you will mobilise the service, manage risk, and report performance is three questions. Answer all three, visibly, in the order asked. Use the buyer's own headings where limits allow.
• Mirror the evaluation criteria. If the marking scheme rewards "a detailed and relevant method with evidence of successful past delivery", your answer needs a method, tailored detail, and evidence. Check each scored element off against your draft.
• Write for a tired stranger. The evaluator may be scoring thirty responses. Short sentences, concrete statements, front-loaded conclusions and clean structure earn goodwill and, more importantly, make marks easy to award.
• State the how, not the that. "We will provide excellent customer service" asserts. "Calls answered within twenty seconds by our own staff, complaints resolved within five working days, monthly performance reports to your contract manager" describes. Evaluators can only score the second kind.

Evidence everything

Every claim should carry proof within reach: a named contract where you did the same thing, a figure, an accreditation, a CV. Two or three well-chosen examples, each with the situation, what you did and the measurable result, will carry most quality questions. This is why the evidence file you built when getting started matters; bid week is too late to discover your best case study has no numbers in it.

Be truthful. Bids become contractual commitments, references get taken, and misrepresentation can exclude you from this competition and future ones. If you do not yet meet a requirement, say how and when you will, honestly.

Price with your eyes open

Complete the pricing schedule exactly as issued; do not restructure it or add caveats, which can make a bid non-compliant. Price the specification as written, including the management time, reporting and mobilisation the contract actually requires. If your price is unusually low, expect the buyer to query it under the abnormally low tender provisions, and be ready to show your workings. Winning at a loss is not winning.

The final days

• Assemble every required attachment against your checklist. Missing mandatory documents fail bids outright.
• Have someone who did not write the bid review it against the questions and criteria, hunting for unanswered fragments and unsupported claims.
• Upload at least a day early. Portals strain under deadline-hour traffic, and file problems found at 11:40 for a midday deadline are found too late.
• Keep a copy of everything submitted, including the portal receipt.

After the result

Win or lose, you receive feedback: under the Procurement Act 2023, an assessment summary showing how your tender scored against the winning one, followed by a standstill period before the contract is signed. Read it coldly and keep it. Losing scores tell you precisely which answers need rebuilding, and a first bid that loses well, scoring solidly with clear reasons, is the normal start of a bidding record that wins. Most successful bidders lost their first one; the ones who kept the feedback lost fewer afterwards.