Bid Winning and Joint Ventures
Acorn’s experience of working with joint ventures and bid winning teams spans over 20-years and stems back to our early involvement within PFI’s across sectors like rail, construction and defence. More recently we have worked within the UK’s nuclear sector, helping companies with various bids for Sellafield.
In most instances, there were a number of organisations bringing their specialisms and unique disciplines together on projects with the amalgamation being far greater than the individual ‘parts’.
These joint ventures saw diverse cultures and corporate identities coming together, and the requirement for Acorn was to help create a fully unified approach, both in their written bid/proposal and presentation, but also to ensure the project delivery was in a common style and agreed by all.
More recently – and with another project we are shortly to embark upon – Acorn have worked with multiple internal teams from a single large organisation, with the focus of the work being to accelerate the cohesiveness of these teams. Making sure they come together effectively, and align themselves in a truly collaborative manner, enables them to fully leverage their capabilities, which ultimately makes their bid an attractive proposition for the client.
As well as those involved in operations and on the delivery of the project, this has included working with dedicated bid winning and business development teams to make sure everyone is ‘on the same page’, and that they present a cohesive and unified approach.
Acorn Founder, Keith Longney: “Bid winning primarily focuses on meeting the approval of project leads and procurement departments who, quite understandably, may feel a degree of unease when considering a proposal from a consortium of organisations.”
“Equally, and something which we have witnessed in the award of highly complex contracts in the nuclear sector, construction and infrastructure, they can also question a proposal which states that a single company can deliver all requirements.”
Bid Alignment and Delivery of the Contract
“When it’s a single organisation making their bid, then alignment is paramount in instilling client confidence: ‘does what I read in the tender submission align with what I’ve been told or seen previously, and what I can ultimately expect to be delivered?’ It’s the promise of how we say we will work aligned to how we actually do work.”
Much of this comes down to culture and leadership; when successful, the style of the senior leadership team cascades through the project teams and the culture, to a degree, takes care of itself as everyone is clear on what is expected of them.
“A risk register is a common inclusion in any bid process which invariably covers financial capabilities, health and safety and business resilience. What it doesn’t typically cover is how you will conduct yourself through the duration of the commission and, the biggest risk, how effectively you [teams within your organisation and third parties] will work together.”
“You may have engineering, electrical and technical people who in isolation are more than adept and bring skills and capabilities which are quite unique but, behaviourally, can they all work together?”
Challenges for a Bid Team
A technical bid is one of the most complex, difficult business development activities for an organisation; it’s so time consuming and invariably fraught, often working to a tight deadline.
“Aside from the delivery itself, there is a sizeable piece of work in authoring the bid submission with research and input required from technical experts both within and external to the business.”
“There may well be an element of learning to understand and appreciate the client’s requirements and the specialisms needed to address these, before they are included in the bid submission in the style of the organisation’s identity.”
“This puts the onus on the theme of the bid, and having clarity that the requirement is understood, along with the ability to create an environment where ideas and innovation may be introduced to the benefit of the project.”
“A degree of acceptance and resilience is required from those within the business: there needs to be a massive amount of investment in this [time and personnel], we can see when it will end [bid deadline], and we know what needs to get done, so we just need to push through.”
“The bid team is subjected to great pressure and must develop the ability to listen to one another, to be innovative in their thinking and consistent in the clarity of their own delivery. So, the bid team and the process itself present many challenges that need addressing.”
Why Collaborative Bids Fail
Acorn’s experience from working with collaborative teams across a number of industry sectors has seen a number of joint ventures fail at the bid stage, or early into the delivery.
By nature, a collaborative team is created when a single entity is unable to deliver the full scope themselves, so they need to introduce specialists with a greater knowledge and separate skillset.
Unfortunately, this can also bring with it a staunchly independent mindset (from smaller organisations not used to working at greater scale) or by introducing working practices from other sectors which are not suitable or aligned to the project. Bringing these cultures together will always prove to be challenging.
At some point in the tender process, the bidding organisation will be asking questions of the client, however, the client will also be asking themselves, “When I’m answering these questions, am I also seeing consistency?”
This can prove to be a point when a bid fails because the people authoring the document aren’t consistent or able to demonstrate the effective collaborative behaviour that is promised for the delivery of the project.
“Working collaboratively and seamlessly can, simplistically, even come down to knowing each other’s names [at the presentation] and not talking over the top of one another. It may sound obvious, but it demonstrates the right behaviours from the earliest stage.”
Bid Winning in the Project Lifecycle
Nearly 20 years ago, as a result of working with and supporting a number of clients (Skanska, Balfour Beatty, Costain etc) with high profile projects in nuclear, rail and infrastructure construction, Acorn created a process which became our proprietary Project Lifecycle Model.
With only minor updates in the time since then, the model still stands true and this includes the approach to bid winning.
Although our model positions bid winning on the periphery of the main activities involved in delivering a project, the five key points remain as pertinent as ever:
- Aligning Bid Partners – internal teams and/or external specialist resources
- Ensuring Client and Bid Co-alignment – have we understood the requirement and are we proposing what the client needs?
- Scoping Team Size and the Management Requirement – is everyone involved there for the right reason, and to do the task required?
- Defining Bid Winning Strategies – what will make our bid stand out; do we demonstrate capability; where does innovation sit; is it clear that we will deliver on our promise?
- Bid Leadership – like the project itself, who is leading this piece of work and what will their involvement be if and when the bid is won?
It is also entirely possible that you might use the Project Lifecycle Model itself when embarking on a joint venture bid, as this is very much a project in its own right.
Congratulations, you’ve won the bid! What next?
It’s understandable that after the intense and highly focused activity of compiling and presenting your bid, and subsequent notification of your submission being accepted, there will justifiably be a degree of ‘cork popping’ and back slapping, but we’re not over the line yet.
There are instances where commissioning bodies have reversed their decision and elected not to proceed further with the bid winning organisation. One reason for this is that it may become quickly apparent that the promises from the bid winning proposal and the reality of working practices and ultimate delivery are actually miles apart.
Again, we will reference our Project Lifecycle Model as a benchmark for any leaders heading-up a significant project. Utilising this framework, leaders can identify scenarios which may arise during the project, make appropriate provision in advance and ensure that robust processes are in place.
Another highly successful tool from Acorn is the Five Dimensions of Teams, a proven model which will also support the project lifecycle at every stage; these models do not need to work in isolation, it isn’t a matter of choosing either, but rather a blended approach that will leverage both to best effect.
Calling a team ‘collaborative’ isn’t sufficient – there are so many challenges over culture and different business drivers, that merely stating you are going to be collaborative, in our experience, is not enough.
It requires an investment in time and resources in order to create a truly cohesive and collaborative alignment. This is the case for both bids and projects.