Tendering: Your new secret weapon

By Alicia Brown of New Doors

Alcia Brown from New Doors, which has established a dedicated tendering arm, putting professional tender support within reach of practices of any scale.

Tender submissions. Most architects would rather pluck out each of their nose hairs than spend time on one. Yet - for any practice that intends to expand beyond the private residential market, particularly if you’re looking at project types in government or institutional sectors - they are a necessary evil.

Tendering is a particularly onerous form of procurement for architecture practices. Time, expertise and resources - usually of senior people - are required in order to achieve a necessarily tailored and professional response. Small practices often assume it is easier for large practices who have in-house teams, but even they often struggle under the volume and incessant demands of responding to tenders. And the close involvement of fee-earning staff is unavoidable.

For smaller practices starting out with tenders, it can be a long and fruitless learning curve until your approach to tenders is streamlined, refined and ultimately successful. Simply establishing standard and largely reusable text like project descriptions and staff bios can be a hurdle, as can the setting up of a well-presented and clearly branded submission template.

Developing a great tender can cost architecture practices thousands of dollars in non-billable hours, so it makes sense to optimise your response. Photo by Marvin Meyer on Unsplash.

How can you improve your tenders?

Most practices can find many ways to improve on the quality of their tender responses, whether that be in the area of strategy, writing, coordination or typesetting.

The big secret to tendering is that standard text will only take you some of the way. Winning tender responses usually require two key elements:

• An established relationship/some level of familiarity with the entity that has released the tender

• A tailored written response that focuses on your understanding of the project

As well as:

• Military organisation and time management

• A lot of effort

What’s the most common mistake architects make in tenders?

Focusing on talking only about your practice – and failing to frame your team, capability and capacity in the context of the needs of the project – is the most common error respondents make. And it's the thing that time-poor architects find hardest to do.

And whether you win or lose, tenders are an important profile raising and relationship development tool. Your responses need to ensure your practice is viewed as a competent potential contender.

Raising the resources to respond to a tender can cost practices thousands in non-billable hours, so it makes sense to ensure that your investment has been optimally worthwhile.

The New Doors tender service is a marketing swiss-army knife; a focused outsourced team with a range of expertise to plug into your business. Photo by Leon on Unsplash

What help is available to elevate your tenders?

Architecture communications consultancy New Doors has established a dedicated tendering arm, which now puts professional tender support within reach of practices of any scale.

With a combined 30+ years of experience in compiling tender responses for architecture practices - and a team that includes a marketing strategist, professional writers, a graphic designer and a submission specialist - New Doors is a marketing swiss-army knife; a focused outsourced team with a range of expertise to plug into your business.

For small practices, New Doors can help get your template and standard text established, and coach you through your first few tenders so that you get a feel for what makes a professional response.

Slightly larger practices can utilise New Door’s services when tendering for work in a new and unfamiliar sector. The team has plenty of experience across all market sectors, meaning they can bring the right themes, jargon and often, sub-consultants to the table.

For the largest practices, New Doors can pick up the slack when key people are on leave, or when the workload is overwhelming. Or, the team can support you on your most important, high value opportunities, to ensure your response is properly strategised, professionally written and creatively presented.

If you think New Doors can help to open doors to new opportunities for your practice, please get in contact with me, Alicia Brown, on 0402 839 049 or by email at alicia@newdoors.com.au. I’ll be pleased to have a no-obligation chat about how we can help.

And visit our website www.newdoors.com.au for more information.