Construction Tenders

What is a Tender & What Are Construction Tenders?

A tender is a competitive process whereby governments and corporations invite formal offers for large projects which must be submitted by a defined deadline. In Australia, any government contract over $250,000 must go to tender. Construction tenders are bids for these types of large contracts in the construction industry.

What Makes a Good Construction Tender?

A well written construction tender should be client focused and identify ways in which your company can assist this organisation in fulfilling its business goals as defined in the tender documents. Tenders are assessed by teams of evaluators whose job it is to achieve the best value for money for the entity releasing the tender, and for this reason you should try to focus on making it as easy as possible for them to find information. This means using subheadings, bullet points and other tools to make the tender easy to read and able to hold the reader’s attention, such as images and templates.

How to Write a Construction Tender

Tender writing is similar to writing a persuasive essay or preparing a report. When writing a construction tender, it should be assumed that the client has no knowledge of your company and the products or services you offer. This will prompt you to explore potential solutions for your client in detail, writing a bid that will educate your prospective buyer about the solutions you have for them. Here are some suggestions for tender writing:

• A tender should define problems or objectives that your prospective client has, then explore how your company can solve these through the use of various solutions. Your goal is to convince busy, sceptical readers of the benefits of your solution so the proposal should be presented in an easy to read, persuasive manner.
• Use facts rather than opinions to give weight to your argument. Research similar projects and refer to these, emphasising how your bid will solve the client’s issues.
• When writing, position your client’s name before your company’s name in the sentence. This will create the sense that your tender is about them rather than about your company.
• Include a Covering Letter and an Executive Summary. The Covering Letter should be a brief overview of the proposal highlighting its key points, while the Executive Summary should be a more detailed overview stating the rationale for the project.
• Include a Statement of Requirement which outlines the reason for the project, and a Project Description which explains its specifics.
• Include a section on your company entitled “About Us” or similar. This should include an organisation chart, biographies on key personnel and company information such as your Australian Business Number (ABN) and Australian Company Number (ACN). This section shows the buyer who they will be dealing with.
• Include a conclusion. This should summarise the tender’s main points and repeat the benefits to the buyer.

Dangers of a Badly Written Construction Tender

While a well written construction tender can dramatically increase business opportunities for your company, a badly written one can have the opposite effect. When a bid includes a lot of copy pasted or generic information and doesn’t really focus on the specific issues that your client is facing it can be a warning sign that the writer hasn’t considered their situation, and can blow out contract opportunities. Also if a tender has poor spelling and grammar or has obviously been recycled using the find and replace function it can negate any opportunities to do business with prospective clients.

Benefits of Using Professional Tender Writers

If you have a construction tender contract which you cannot risk missing, it could be worth engaging a Tenders AZ Construction tenders professional to write your tender. These people are generally from a business background and have the right skills to pitch a winning bid for you. This model has a number of benefits, outlined as follows:

• It takes a fraction of the time to outsource your proposal compared to writing it yourself
• You can usually claim the cost as a business expense
• Using a professional should give you much better results while eliminating the stress associated with writing your own proposals
• It may not be worth the risk of missing a big sales opportunity if you write your own tender.