Case Studies

We facilitated a business planning ‘away day’ for Pod-Trak, a rail engineering contractor specialising in railway electrification, civil engineering, permanent way, communications, and airports and stations. We followed-up the event with a detailed report to show the specific actions for the team to undertake. The actions were important for taking the team to the next step in the business planning process, i.e. prioritising the activities for more detailed analysis of how competitive advantage could be gained.

The Tideway project is creating a huge super sewer under the River Thames to tackle London’s problem of sewage outfall into the river. London’s sewers were designed for a population a quarter of today’s size. Our client was bidding against other world-class joint ventures to be the principal contractor for the longest section of the scheme valued at £750m. We supported the joint venture by writing engineering methodologies for tunnelling, river works and associated activities, as well as preparing responses about risk control, logistics, architecture, and management of design, supply chain, cost and programme. Our client’s bid was successful.

Our client is a global fire engineering consultancy that was bidding to provide services for life safety systems across the Battersea Power Station redevelopment site. We supported the business in its development of bid presentation material, to promote the credibility of the organisation for the role of Life Safety Systems Manager. Our client’s bid was successful and the consultancy was appointed for the role to provide 10 years’ services.

We coached our client’s bid team in its submission to a prominent West London college for architectural and engineering consultancy, and for project management services. Our client is one of the world’s most prominent engineering, architectural and management consultancies. Its proposal was successful, leading to its appointment as designer of the £500m mixed-use education / residential development, a huge growth opportunity for London.

Our client was unfamiliar with the formal process of managing bids through the review cycles. We were asked to manage the bid schedule to ensure the numerous responses were ready on time for senior management reviews before submission. Our role included writing responses based on information gained in our work alongside the client’s signal engineering and other specialists.

We supported a construction joint venture in its bid to Highways England for a new £75m interchange project. This required our understanding of civil engineering works, and of working with technical specialists to collaboratively develop strong responses to bid questions.

We supported an incumbent bidder to win £40m of security services to a major brand in global public galleries. This was our client’s largest opportunity, and the proposal was to be submitted to a new procurement team unfamiliar with our client’s track record. Our client had everything to lose, and the competition was severe. We frequently hear of ‘must-win’ bids, but this one was precisely that – the ‘jewel in the crown’ of our client’s security services.

We delivered a half-day bid training course for charity sector specialists considering commercial tendering for work in the private sector. Tendering to private sector clients was a daunting prospect for the delegates, but we showed them a process to make the task manageable and effective.

We supported our client on multiple overlapping bids, leading strategy workshops and storyboarding exercises to develop bid responses that made an impact. Our client’s pre-qualification submissions were all successful.