Safety And Tender Submissions

Guest Post by Craig Clancy from Safety In Industry

So, you’ve managed to receive a set of documents called an RFT – Request For Tender, or a Tender Proposal, Tender Submission, or EOI – Expression Of Interest or another acronym that the industry tries to confuse you with that requires you to document how you intend on running a project.

You are needing to complete the documents provided, measure the job and submit a price – right ? Well … sort of right ! Unfortunately it’s not as easy as that, as anyone in the industry can testify.

Along with having a very competitive price and being in the best position to win a tender, your submission needs to deliver 2 important items:

1) You’re ability to provide Value For Money (VFM)

2) You have the capability and capacity to safely and successfully fulfil the requirements of the contract.

What does all this mean? Value for Money or VFM means different things to different stakeholders.

Value For Money in general terms means: that the goods or service was worth the price a client paid. Factors that could be considered are items like quality, price, whole of life costs, green factors etc. The weighting on each factor can vary from project to project or job to job, so its important to ‘read between the lines’ or ask the question about what is important to your client.

Capability refers to your organisations ability to undertake the job having the right skills, processes and systems in place to safely and competently undertake the works.

Capacity refers to your organisations ability to supply the necessary human and plant resources to undertake the tasks in the timeframe required. Redundancy, or back up resources also need to be considered within your proposal.

Your proposal needs to focus on your organisations ability to provide a competitive prices whilst posing the least amount of RISK for your client. If your submission or tender mitigates risks to your client, it will stand in high regard.

Whilst addressing your ability to undertake the project with minimal risk to your client, tenders also have different selection criteria. Selection criteria can also have different weightings which means the client places higher regard on some criteria above others. Your submission also needs to clearly identify and address how your organisation can deliver on these key selection criteria.

Developing a ‘Headlining’ submission is not an easy task and requires commitment and focus by submission participants. For those who have experienced tendering for State and Federal Government works can testify, the requirements can be quite overwhelming and challenging for even the largest of organisations.

So where do you begin ? Well, if you are wanting to ‘STEP UP’ and look for newer markets for your services, you will undoubtedly be experiencing pressures to supply evidence of systems and processes that you operate by. If you have little in the way of management systems and processes you will be stretched to fulfil most mid tier tender or EOI requirements, but you can change this by starting NOW to develop processes and systems around standard project requirements.

The following is brief list of key requirements typically required for most tenders. You can commence collating this documentation over time as you start to build your company profile and capability. It is not that difficult, it takes a few minutes a week which could make all the difference to the long term sustainability of your organisation.

Some Key requirements:

• Company details – ACN/ABN / BSA licence # / PQC level (Qld only)
• Company primary contacts
• A brief introduction of your organisation:

– Primary market/works you undertake

– Key sectors of the market you service

• Referees
• Financial statements – past 3 years
• Insurances
• Competitive Skills you are able to offer above your competitors
• Commitment to your company values
• Key personnel in your organisation (Start to develop CV’s)
• Key personnel identified for the project (Start to develop CV’s)

– Key personnel experience on the type of project you’re tendering

– The project teams experience together

• Key Projects successfully completed in the past (Start to develop project CV’s)

– Clearly identify your track record (size, type, location, client, value, problems faced, challenges overcome, key personnel)

• Current Workload – identify capacity (availability for workforce) to comfortably undertake the job with current workload
• Future Workload – Identify current tenders, your success rate for winning and align future workforce requirements with workforce requirements for this tender.
• Resources required – eg plant and equipment

– Identify ability to cover redundancy

• Safety and Environmental History – LTI, MTI, LTIFR, Notices, Breaches
• Your approach to Quality
• Your approach to risk management
• Management Plans – Execution, Site, Traffic, ESD, ESC, Whole of Life, Communication, Water, Recycling, IT, HR, IPP, Commissioning, Fire Ant, etc…
• Evidence of commitment to training
• Commitment to LIP (Local Industry Policy)
• Commitment to Indigenous participation (IPP)
• Commitment to apprentices
• Certificates held – Quality, Safety, Environmental, FSC (3rd Party, 2nd Party)
• Awards received

This list is by no means exhaustive and items may not be required for some tenders, however if you start building your library of the above items, when that BIG one finally lands on your desk, you will hopefully be able to readily supply a larger portion of the tender requirements.

We will explore selected items in future articles to help you develop that Headlining document.