BWL support plumbing and heating contractor with LHC bid
In March 2023, BWL Professional Bid Services was engaged by a Cardiff-based plumbing and heating contractor, who required support with their bid to be accepted onto the LHCs Asset Safety and Compliance Framework. The scope of services to be provided under the Gas, Heating, and Air conditioning Lots being bid for included the servicing, maintenance, and repair of both domestic and commercial heating systems.
About the tender
The LHC Group is a not-for-profit central purchasing body that set up framework agreements for the provision of building works, goods, and services for use in the public sector.
The Asset Safety and Compliance (ASC1) framework consisted of five workstreams, covering asbestos management, legionella management, electrical testing and heating, ventilation and air conditioning compliance, servicing, and maintenance services.
The framework is set to run for a four-year period, starting in July 2023, is split into geographical areas across the UK and allows any public sector organisation to use the framework to procure services, either through a direct award or min-competition.
In addition to evidence of how tenderers could provide a reliable and high-quality service, LHC also required reassurance on how prospective providers could deliver tangible social value and community benefits in line with the LHC ‘Lifetime Values’ of natural capital, social capital, human capital and produced capital.
Our approach
The bid was led by one of our Bid Consultants with support being provided by two of our Senior Bid Writers. Our team initially completed a full review of all documentation, including the framework terms and conditions, the specification, ITT documentation, and relevant legislation including the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 to fully understand the tender requirements and LHCs objectives.
The tender questions (18 in total) were divided up into different question sets that represented general, regional, and technical elements of the framework.
- General questions on project management processes and customer service performance
- Regional questions regarding resource capability and social value commitments
- Workstream questions that were focused on technical skill, knowledge, and capability to deliver specific services
The questions were assigned to each member of the bid team, and we commenced developing storyboards for each response, breaking down the responses into section headers with key requirements to address and supporting evidence to include.
On day 2 of the bid, a kick-off meeting with our client’s Operations Director was held to discuss our approach to the tender responses, including overall strategy, win themes, and evidence required such as qualifications and certifications. Subsequent calls were then arranged with their subject matter experts (SMEs) to discuss and extract specific information needed to address each response in detail.
We drafted detailed and evidence-based responses using the information and evidence collected from our client’s team. We focused on aligning LHCs requirements and objectives with our client’s strengths and company values to develop strong win themes. We also curated all responses to follow the high score indicators within the evaluation matrix to ensure that responses would score well by the LHCs panel during the assessment stage.
As standard, our Head of Compliance completed reviews of all responses at 1st draft stage, before final changes were made by our bid team and the responses were submitted to our client for review ahead of submission.
With 18 tender questions to complete within 6 days, this bid and how it was successfully completed and managed, clearly demonstrates how BWL can work to tight timescales, whilst always delivering a high-quality level of service.
Testimonial
We received the following feedback from our client shortly after the submission of the bid:
“The attention the BWL team gave us was excellent and brought so many things to our attention that we would not have thought about or included if we had tried to submit the tender ourselves. Thank you very much for all your support.”