When I wrote  Think and Win Bids, my target reader was anyone involved in bidding high-value B2G or B2B projects or contracts.

Since its publication, I’ve deepened my involvement in the Public Private Partnerships sector and, looking back over the book’s content, it would be difficult to think of a project type to which the advice I’ve offered holds greater relevance.

 What IS Bid Strategy?

As I point out in Chapter 6 of the book, there are so many misinformed “takes” on the concept of “bid strategy” that it’s valuable to first get clear on what bid strategy isn’t.

Bid strategy could truly be the birthplace of the classic “garbage in = garbage out” truism . . . or perhaps, contextualised more closely, “garbage process = garbage result”.

Check Your War Room Walls

For too many bidders, “bid strategy” is viewed as something akin to a “win theme” or a series of “silver bullets”.

The evidence of this overly simplistic approach can usually be found in the form of sketchy texta-on-butcher’s paper bullet points, adorning the walls of the “war rooms” or hotel function rooms where the superficial (“once-around-the-block-in-quick-time”) conversations that inspired them, took place.

This collection of minimally thought-out, skeletally documented “mind maps” hardly qualifies for a serious strategy. Bid strategy – real, comprehensive, well researched and tested strategy – cannot possibly result from these outputs.

That leads me to what bid strategy is: 

Strategy is a noun. Not just a concept. And in the context of a bid, it’s a tangible, formal written blueprint that guides every aspect of the bid. All-encompassing, investigated in depth, and articulated in detail, it informs the context, and directs the content, of a bid.

So, now to formulating the underlying, guiding strategy for a Public Private Partnership bid.

Firstly, my observations and experience with this sector would indicate that not only do all my admonitions for developing strategy for any other type of bid hold true (an early pre-EOI start, proper intelligence-generating activities, comprehensive risk analysis) . . . there are many  additional considerations for peak bidding performance on a PPP.

A Three-Stage Process

Among these is the fact that bid strategy formulation should be a three-stage process (it’s a two-stage process in a traditional bid):

A bid sponsor would, ideally, select its consortium partners based on the guidance of a . . . you guessed it, formal (albeit preliminary) bid strategy. That’s because, once the members of your partnership have been put in place, it’s too late to address issues arising from the realisation that your partners don’t have the skills or track record to support the specifics of a latterly-developed strategy.

Let’s take a hypothetical instance in which all the required project, client and competitor research was, in fact, undertaken upfront – and a preliminary bid strategy was formulated before a consortium was finalised. In such an instance, the second phase of your strategy development would focus on aligning the now-in-place strengths of your consortium, with the knowledge of the project and client that you drilled out and collated in the first phase of your strategy. It’s the quality of that blueprint that gets you over the line (or not) in the EOI phase.

Now comes the third and ultimate phase in the development of your bid strategy – that which will take you from shortlistee to winner. Keep a watch out here in the Industry-Specific section of Pursuits Academy, and I’ll bring this to you soon.