Project Overview
Starting in February 2025, we supported a domiciliary care company with a business-critical bid for the client, who was bidding for a place on the Independent Living Support Service framework for the London Borough of Newham. Led by Sylvia Clydesdale, who has successfully supported similar large care frameworks for Denbighshire County Council and Manchester City Council, this project consisted of more than four lots, each with their own quality response document.
Initially, Sylvia held an information-gathering meeting with the client via MS Teams to discuss topics such as recruitment, quality measuring metrics and social value which made up the narrative questions in the tender return. The authority was asking for a comprehensive response, with 15,000 words required across 12 quality questions. After these responses had been drafted by Sylvia, Ivy and Alley, they progressed through our ISO 9001:2015-certified quality management system in accordance with the following steps:
- Our dedicated health and social care reviewer Hannah Robinson, assessed the responses internally, checking the wording of the question against the narrative, additionally assessing top-scoring factors such as persuasiveness, flow and overall presentation
- All narrative responses were proofread by two of our CIEP-accredited external proofreading team, supporting a polished and professional final version
- Proofread documents were then sent to the client by Sylvia, who amended the narrative responses based on the client’s preferences, to refine and tailor the submission exactly to their business’ methodology.
Main challenges
Although this project was started in February 2025, and was originally due in early March, halfway through the writing of this project, the authority encountered issues regarding the consistency of the bidding terms, leading them to pause the procurement process for all bidders.
Our team undertook daily checks of the tender portal and Find a Tender, and a week later we identified that the opportunity had been republished and mobilised this quickly with our client. Proposals Manager Adam McCabe liaised with them to discuss the new scope of works which had come with the re-release of the tender.
The bid was then submitted on the 18 March 2025, Sylvia worked with our client to upload and submit all the necessary documents ahead of the deadline, producing a complete and compliant tender submission. The administrative side of completing a bid can be complicated and daunting, so our team always offer to support clients throughout with bid management and admin as part of our service.
Building client relationships
As this was a must-win bid for our client, they engaged with us as bid and tender experts to maximise their chance of success in the process. Following a feedback form post-submission, they expressed gratitude and satisfaction regarding the quality of the narrative responses, our professionalism and Sylvia’s approach to customer care. For example, during this project, Sylvia signposted our client to suitable online resources and companies to help them re-draft and refine their business continuity plan, to make the submission as strong as possible.
Since February 2025, this client has since returned to us for additional bid writing assistance. Sylvia supported the client on a subsequent submission, where they were successful in gaining a place on a DPS framework for Haringey Council in May 2025.