How to Tender for Building Work: Tips from the Experts
By: John Hudson - Hudson Succeed
Tags: Procurement, Business Strategy, Outsourcing, Business Growth, Business Development

Have you got questions on how to tender for building work? We have the answers…

When you’re looking for how to tender for building work, you may have several questions. The more you learn, the more questions may arise. Luckily, we aim to offer as much advice as we can. If you have questions, we will use decades of experience and our 87% success rate to offer support.

Let’s get into how to tender for building work.

Finding building work opportunities

When you want to search for bid opportunities, the easiest and best way is through portals. This is the first stage of how to tender for building work. There are several sites, ours included, that offer streamlined experiences to help make finding contracts easy. The UK has a contract finder, for example, that allows users to use filters. These filters can be selected to show results that are suitable for SMEs or from certain periods of time. You can also discover awarded contracts. It is a great tool for finding contracts.

As mentioned, there are lots of sites that host portals for tender opportunities. These portals make it much easier to find contracts. So, instead of going through dozens of websites and painstakingly searching, you can easily find the information you need. One aspect that sets our portals apart from the rest is that we don’t use CPV codes. This means we check all opportunities as we upload them to our portal, so no contracts will be missed.

Since we are focused on how to tender for building work, we recommend our construction portal.

It is important when searching for opportunities that you check your eligibility. Many businesses will bid for work they cannot actually deliver. This is a huge waste of time, money, and resources. If you hire bid writing services, these experts will be able to help you break down a bid, checking your eligibility.

Writing the bid

Once you have selected the opportunity you wish to pursue, you can begin to write your bid. A lot of people may worry at this stage. A lot goes into bid writing, so it can be better to hire an expert. Professional bid writers can take the stress out of the process for you by handling the entire thing. They may even submit the bid on your behalf. Whether you choose to write it yourself or hire an expert, here’s what needs to be implemented to ensure success.

Break down the documents

The first stage of writing your bid is to break down the buyer’s documents. This is important so you know exactly what is required. This is often done when checking for eligibility as you can see whether you can deliver the required work.

2. Use excellent writing and communication skills

Writing a bid does require excellent writing and communication skills. This is why so many businesses outsource to bid writers. It is their job to do it well. Your bid needs to be well written and communicate clearly your ideas and concepts.

3. Proofreading abilities

Your bid is your opportunity to stand out and impress the buyer. You won’t do this if your bid is full of errors. It gives the impression you are not thorough with your work. So, it is important to proof and edit your work, so it is as close to perfect as possible.

4. Time and project management

Since tenders often have several deadlines, it is important to be organised. This is why it is important to break down the tender. This way you can work out exactly what needs to be done, and when to do it by.

Summary

In summary, the process of how to tender for building work is broken into two parts:

Finding the opportunities

Writing the bid.

These are some of the skills needed to increase your chances of success:

Breaking down the documents Using excellent writing and communication skills Proofreading abilities Time and project management.

If you still have questions on how to tender for building work, don’t hesitate to contact us. We aim to help however we can, and we are confident we can support you.

Find more helpful tips and advice in our blogs. We cover topics including:

Our services

Tender Writing

Once you’ve found the perfect bid for your business, send it our way. Our Bid Writers can take care of the whole thing for you they’ll even submit it on your behalf. They’ll let you know what they need from you, providing you with a full Tender Writing breakdown.

Tender Ready

Our Tender Ready 4-week programme is perfect for businesses that have never tendered before. A Bid Writer will work with you to ensure you have everything in place to tender successfully. They can also help you better understand the tendering process. Tender Ready offers your business:

A 12-month subscription to one Hudson Discover.

Access to Global Bid Directors and Senior Bidding Professionals.

An Organisation-wide Bid library, including 3 case studies, 5 CVs and policies.

Additional flexible benefits.

Tender Improvement

If you’ve been tendering but aren’t seeing success from your current efforts, our Tender Improvement package can help. Our Bid Team will assess your previous responses and tender documents. They will work with you to improve for future submissions. This package includes a 12-month subscription to a Hudson Discover portal and additional tendering development services.

Tender Mentor

If you’ve written your own tender response and need it double-checked for errors, Tender Mentor can help. A Bid Writer will proofread your work for any inconsistencies, grammar or spelling mistakes. They will also ensure it’s in line with the specification before you submit. This can help you formulate a winning submission.

Additional support

If you only need the assistance with PQQs or SQs we can help. Send the information over to us and we can provide you with a quote for the work involved.

Discover Elite

Upgrading to Discover Elite can help optimise your tendering efforts — even when you’re busy. Our two new time-saving tools can improve your competitor awareness and success rate when bidding for a contract.

The Ultimate Time Saver package offers your business:

A maximum of five tender breakdowns per month.

An annual subscription to a maximum of two Hudson Discover sector-specific portals. This option can help businesses that overlap two industries such as Healthcare and Technology, for example.

Pre-market and award engagement notices monitored on your behalf.

Buyer portal management, including registration, password management, downloading documents and assessing viability based on your bid or no-bid strategy.

Weekly phone calls with your dedicated Account Manager to discuss viable tendering opportunities.

The Become a Pre-Bid Master package also includes:

All of the above.

Up to seven tender breakdowns per month.

A Bid Strategy delivered by a Senior Bid Manager with a minimum of 5 years of experience. It will also be managed by our Global Bid Director.

Contact us to find out how we can help your business grow.