You may well be scratching your head wondering what on earth the connection is between Bid and Tender Writing, and Health and Safety (H&S). Well, it is actually quite a close connection – let me tell you how.
If you are a corporate or an SME, the chances are that at some point you are going to want to respond to a tender to win a contract – or to get onto what is known as a framework agreement. Without doing this, you have no chance of doing the work.
Note: a framework agreement is where an organisation (often local government) performs due diligence with several businesses who can perform a service for them. This due diligence is in the form of a tender and there will be typically between three and six who will be appointed to the framework. Once on the framework you are then eligible to do work for the organisation.
A tender is typically divided into three parts as follows:
· The costing section where you explain how much your service will cost.
· Quality questions – this is where the organisation may ask you how you will go about providing the service.
· Compliance – this is where they will check if you are a suitable business to work with.
It is the compliance section that is generally the most important for H&S. They will want to know your financial background and ask about what policies and procedures you have in place and how you apply them in your business. Most organisations will want to see a H&S Policy, evidence of the H&S training, and how you keep your staff up to date with current legislation. Sometimes they ask about your H&S application in the quality questions too. I’ve also seen many questions asking for examples of the training records kept and the process for refreshing the knowledge of the staff.
They obviously want to know about a lot of other policies and procedures as well. If you would like to download a copy of my Tender Ready Checklist which lists the most commonly asked for policy and statement documents that you should have in place before bidding, then you can download that here. I’m also happy to discuss this with you.
The whole point about investigating all this is to ensure that they are doing business with other businesses who are ethically and financially sound, thus protecting their own reputations. My best tip for you is to get all this compliance in place so that when you next want to respond to a tender, the whole process is smoother.
Bio:
Alison Reeves is a bid writer with over 25 years’ experience and a client base who are growing their businesses by responding to tenders. You can find Alison on Linked In and via her website.
The Bid Writer www.thebidwriter.com 07778 657003
Bid and Tender Writing and Training.
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