The Tender Trap
Large, lucrative (especially government) tenders can seem the holy grail of business. Get one and you’re set.
Bidding for tenders, however, is tricky. In addition to the myriad draconian requirements of the fat tender document itself, there are unwritten laws of an even harsher hue.
Below are the invisible tender rules I’ve discovered the hard way. I welcome your additions, that we may warn budding bidders.
Content
Bids require input from diverse sources. Colleagues who hate each other, can’t string a sentence and are too busy must unite.
Current clients and projects, abandoned for this purpose, suffer accordingly.
Team
To demonstrate their importance, one or more team members must refuse repeated entreaties to deliver the content they promised weeks earlier.
This will derail the process and upset everyone.
Pressure
As the deadline nears, more staff must work late or overnight. Free pizzas and promises of time off ‘when it’s all over’ will fail to curb flagging morale and rising resentment.
Voice
When all contributions are finally in, the bid will look like it was written by 14 of Sally Field’s personalities in Sibyl.
Though it’s obvious the bid must be edited to give it one voice, there won’t be time.
File
Various versions of the bid file, created to simultaneously elicit disparate contributions, must be confused until no-one knows which is the ‘master’.
Once an entire day has been spent painstakingly cutting and pasting the definitive file, it must be accidentally deleted from a laptop (with no backup).
If no IT person is available, one must be flown in to perform a forensic recovery.
Deadline
Regardless of how many months the bid has been on the radar, the document must be delivered at the very end of the final day.
This will preclude all postal and even courier services. Instead, the most junior team member must personally carry the document on an expensive, last minute flight, take a cab to the bid office and drop it through the chute two minutes before the deadline.
Result
One night’s euphoria at finishing the bid will precede 2-3 weeks’ anxious wait (during which it’ll be difficult to concentrate on anything else).
The agony of being beaten by a more organised and professional competitor will only be exceeded by shock at the total cost of the bid and pain at losing loyal clients sick of being neglected.
All these things have happened to me. Do they ring true for you, or have I been moving in the wrong circles?
Or have you even worse tales to tell?!
Paul Hassing, Founder & Senior Writer, The Feisty Empire
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Wow that brought back some memories, Paul. It’s been over 5 yrs since I was involved in tenders, but those memories of late nights collating information and printing multiple copies of tender responses came flooding back in an instant!
The best bok I’ve ever read on tender pitches (the ones that also require a presentation in person) is Stop Bitching, Start Pitching
http://www.murdochbooks.com.au/bitchpitch.htm
-Sonia
Dear Sonia, I’m gratified (yet sorry) that my recollections resonated with you. I’ll be fascinated to see whether others also agree.
Many thanks for that link. I will check it out for sure. Best regards, P.
Hi Folks,
Hi Sonia
Good to see you 
You’ve done it again mate…I can feel another rant coming on
This takes me back too..back to the days when I was in Community Housing. The single biggest expense for Community Organisations (and I daresay, many businesses), in this country, is dealing with Government machinery…
Amongst other ludicrous and unnecessary expenses, the biggest we faced were repeatedly submitting similar grant applications (which were never fully funded against the project parameters – i.e. token gestures, i.e. waste of tax-payer money), and re-educating new officers as a result of ‘constant and never-ending staff-movement’.
There is another aspect of the Tender Process that I find a tad offensive too. And what I’m about to say is a generalisation…It is not my intention to imply that all successful tender applicants are by definition bad.
You touched on the the issue Paul when you said “Large, lucrative (especially government) tenders can seem the holy grail of business. Get one and you’re set.”
Why is that?
I’ve seen it myself…too many times. A business secures a long-term (or even a short-term), gov’t contract and everyone is jumping up and down like they’ve just won lotto. Have they? And who pays for the winnings?
What really pisses me off, as you no doubt know by now, are the hypocrisies of our culture and systems. Example: Too often, the same people that heap disdain on the ‘Unemployed’ for being a drain on the country/economy are the same people that charge the government $40,000.00 to install a public toilet seat! I dare us to do an actual cost-benefit analysis!
I remember when I was in the RAAF as an aeronautical engineer, there were these panel screws that were used in a range of places throughout most aircraft. The numbers used across the whole RAAF were staggering. I remember finding what appeared to be an exact same screw in a hardware store.
I bought a few of the hardware store screws. I took them to work and had them analysed. They were exactly the same screw in every detail (including manufacturer), save for 2. The price and a little ‘A’ stamped on the head of the screw, which indicated ‘Aircraft Quality’.
The price of the hardware store screw (circa 1982): $0.40 each.
The price of the same screw with an ‘A’ stamped on it. And bare in mind that this is the special wholesale price for the RAAF that orders massive quantities: $3.60 EACH!
You do the math!
Now, for all the ‘in the know’, ‘cradle to grave’, ’till death do us part’, ‘defenders of the faith’ out there, the cost was not embedded in crack-testing the ‘A’ screws. We checked that too. Standard quality testing is all that they were subject to.
Ah Yes! The sweet smell of the ‘Greater Good’ and the ‘Common Wealth’?
You know we’re soaking in it?
Cheers
Stephen G
PS Oh and I had cause, during a conversation the other day, to revisit another old finding of mine. I used to get monthly and annual reports from the Reserve Bank (back in the mid to late 90s. I don’t think enough has changed since to alter this observation).
Upon reading these documents over some months, I couldn’t help but notice that we manufacture approximately (on average), $20 Billion per year through the Mint. I also couldn’t help but notice that this money is released into the market place as DEBT! I could find no official mechanism, policy, rationale or irrationale that explains this seemingly arbitrary and fundamental decision/choice made by some unnamed and apparently unknowable doyen of economic unsustainability.
Can you imagine what our country/world would be like if we simply released money into the market place as Credit? Would we remain subject to repeated Economic Downturns each time the market attempts to claw back/balance a mass of exponentially increasing debts that have become so large and unwieldy that even governments can’t repay them?…so who pays?…and who gets paid? Hmmm!
You know we’re still soaking in it?
Dear Stephen, thank you again for putting my blog post to shame. I can’t believe you give so much of yourself when you’ve a young blog of your own waiting to be fed!
Your screw-the-RAAF story really got me. I recall that my departed uncle, when working on the sheer face of a Tasmanian dam many moons ago, was witness to ‘disposable’ gear.
Whenever a worker broke for lunch or end of shift, he’d take off his expensive leather gloves and toss them into into the void, rather than carry them back to camp.
And any other moment that required free hands would add a glissando of taxpayer-funded accoutrements to the heap at the bottom of the gorge. A dam shame.
Thanks again for your wonderful comment.
Thanks for the great post. I’m currently putting a tender out for my second wife at the moment and having trouble with the requirements sections…..I couldn’t keep it to a single page
Good to see Stephen back with an excellent comment as usual.
On a serious note we tender to supply cookware for the major developers. The process is time consuming and difficult and then it often comes down to relationships (who you know, not what you have to offer) whick makes a mockery of the tender process. Great when you are one of the lucky few, not great if you send time and money on a tender that wont even be considered.
Thank you, Malcolm. It’s always great to get your CEO perspective.
I read the other day that a desalination plant tenderer got $10 million from the State Government for producing a LOSING bid.
Have you any thoughts on this decision?
PS: I spotted a few life partners on eBay over the weekend. Could be worth a look…
Don’t you just love Malcolm’s lovely little ‘CEO-isms’?
Somewhat reminiscent of ‘ass-pennies’ ( http://www.yourdailymedia.com/media/1150629369/Ass_Pennies ):
“Good to see Stephen back with an excellent comment as usual.”
“On a serious note…”
Yes, by all means, inflate my massive Bone China ego with it’s favourite opiate whilst gently caressing it to the edge of the nearest Open Cut Mine and then…oops! How did that happen? Aaaarrre yooooouuuu Ohhhhh-Kayyyyyyy?
Did you include ‘absolutely no sensibilities’ in your list of ’second wife’ requirements?
Ahh! Yes! The good ol’ days…I gotta tell ya Malcolm, and I’m confident I can speak for most of us here, when I say, we really miss ya Cobba. It’s just not the same when you’re not around
Just between you and me, Paul’s just so bluddy nice! You know what I mean? ;-P
Ooh! Shoosh! Act straight! Here he comes!…
G’day Paul
Re: putting your blog to shame: I hardly consider shear volume a measure of literary prowess ol’ Bean
And my pre-pubescent blog is not showing signs of malnutrition just yet… with 4 posts in the last week, it’s at least not lacking in volume, that’s for sure…:-)
That ‘Dam Tasmanian’ story could have been the beginning of a thriving hardware business. I saw it happen by degree when I was in the RAAF. There was actually a small black market in ‘acquired over-stocked items’…there were a couple of chaps that would’ve put eBay to shame.
Speaking of extra curricular tax payer expenditure, I have a feeling that I may have spoken of this in one of your very early posts mate; but just in case I didn’t, I’ll throw it in here just for added texture. It nicely adds to my ensemble of bureaucratic and cultural insanities that have come to pass as ‘wise’, ‘normal’ and fiscally sound:
Again, I’ll be relying on you folks to do the math, and to extrapolate the likelihood and cost of similar scenarios bespeckled throughout our history and across our wide, brown, lucky, land…
1961 (I think – I’m doing this from memory, so try not to crucify me on the minutia
, Australia orders 116 Dassault Mirage Fighter Bombers. But being a prepubescent nation, we, as usual, feel the need to stamp our individuality indelibly upon the psyche of the International Community by being completely stupid.
We don’t want the standard Mirage 111O (16 of the 100 ordered were Dual Seaters: 111D)…Nooooo! We want the 111O Airframe with the very latest engine from the 111C don’t we? Because that’ll make it go faster…and we need our Mirages to be faster than anyone else’s because we’ve got a great big country with a great big coastline to protect with our 100 Fighter Bombers? Ok! That makes sense?…
Butt Weight~ There’s more – The latest engines are 9 inches (that’s 22.86cm for all the later model humans out there), longer than the standard engines.
A Problem? No bluddy worries mate…that’s not a problem. Just give us the planes, we’ll fix ‘em up in the shed when we get ‘em home. And that’s exactly what we did.
We bought them home, cut the planes in half (across the middle of the fuselage), and wacked a 9 inch beam in the middle, making the planes 9 inches longer…Problem solved!
Yeh! Minor detail! We didn’t move any of the maintenance access panels. So, since then, every time a team of 6 Engineers had to remove an engine, it took an average of 15 man hours, when it was designed to take 3 men a total of 3 man hours. And of course it takes even longer to get an engine back in.
Ok! You can start extrapolating now. You can start by including all the other trades and maintenance engineers…and the increased stresses that reduced the G-Force thresholds, maneuverability, efficacy and ultimately the life of the aircraft…
Like I said, you do the math
Thanks guys…it’s been a ‘dam blast’ as usual
Cheers
Stephen G
That is plane crazy!
I’m jolly glad I wasn’t one of ‘the few’. Sounds like there were a few too many!
Thank you, Stephen, for dropping a lit wad into the septic tank of Australia’s public out-takes.
You’ll forgive me for hiding behind the Furphy tank until the blast dissipates.
Just added Sonia’s book recommendation to the shop. Thanks again, Sonia!
You know I just love your ‘copywriter’ quips…of course your forgiven…but mate, having so artfully paved the way for my puritanical pontifications prying open petrified purloins politique, I’d hardly accuse of you of hiding
Employing common-sense OH&S and deftly minimising fall-out yes, but not hiding
Perhaps I should start signing off with:
Cheers
Stephen G
Do Not Operate Without Proper Safety Equipment ;-P
A former client of mine was keen to apply for a grant, ostensibly to offer certain kinds of training to young entrepreneurs. After the obligatory trip to Canberra to meet with the relevent Government department (and missing the flight back).
I was promised all the help and support I needed from his research and journalistic staff. Researcher resigned suddenly, journalist was allocated elsewhere so it was left to me.
Not only did I need to contend with many of the above issues raised by Paul (sans pizza however), but I also needed to get through to my client that he only got the money AFTER he spent it on the program requirements. Turns out he had visions of getting a nice fat cheque to spend on himself!
Thank god the bid was unsuccessful, as there was no way he would have been able to deliver (and I sure as anything wasn’t going to stick around).
Great to see you again, Meredith. Thank you for your story. It seems there’s quite a lot of it about! I wonder if anyone will weigh in with a good news tender tale. Best regards, P.
Congratulations, Stephen! You win the Alliteration Stakes by a diminutive demi-dome.
Ooh! Great!…I think
Speaking of ‘dome-estic’ overtures; Meredith’s story sure strikes a few dischords resonant with our ‘quavering’ quandaries…don’t you reckon?(Oooh! Might have to grab your ‘eye-muffs’ after that one mate
Thanks Meredith…it just all sounds so very familiar
Cheers
Stephen G
I don’t have too much to add here, as I have not been directly involved with a tender process. But having worked for companies that have tendered to various state and also federal government(s), even though I’ve not been directly involved, I have formed the opinion that it is probably over-rated. Although a successful tender pitch could be lucrative, when balanced against the time spent on it and all the other unsuccessful tender bids, it can’t be very profitable at all, in my opinion.
An unscientific view indeed, and not one based on direct experience, but its one I’m sticking with until convinced otherwise.
Thank you, Stephen, H. I’m reading The Dip at the moment, and the hoops and rigmarole of the tendering process seem to constitute a pretty damn big dip.
Those who knuckle down and make it through may well reach broad, sunny uplands. But I must agree with you that it’s overrated.
I once told a recruitment consultant about a government contract that was right up his alley. He rejected it out of hand, saying that public sector drama simply wasn’t worth the candle.
So it seems your instincts may be correct. This is sad. I hope we can entice some public sector folk to fly their flag in here. After all, it’s our money, Ralph! Thanks again.