This is not so easy to answer. It depends on so many things. But if you have a tender in mind, and you are keen to put in a bid for it because you want the work - then you need some answer to that question.
These are some of the complexities that I face as a bid or tender writer in answering that question. One crucial pre-requisite to arriving at a realistic price is having sight of the Invitation To Tender (ITT). Usually the tender issuer will place confidentiality restrictions on the ITT. So, a first step might be to sign an NDA, so that you are not in breach of your NDA in passing it to me. In the absence of the ITT, a common fee is £20,000. How can you quote when you have no idea what is involved?
Complexity
Moving on from that, there are different kinds of complexity and different skills may be required to produce a compelling tender response. Consider
Complexity of content - how complex is the ITT? Is it something along the lines of 3 questions each requiring 300 words or is it 25 questions each requiring 3000 words? The amount of work would be hugely different. The first case may take 2 or 3 days. The second case may take 2 or 3 weeks or more.
Complexity of systemic change - if you win the tender, what will the work then entail? Will it be something like a one-person research business performing a literature review on some topic? In this case, that one-person business probably has everything in place to complete the work. Or will it be something like providing IT services for some credit card processing function. In this case, there will be all sorts of up-front investment in server infrastructure (onsite or cloud based), network infrastructure, compliance requirements, insurance requirements, staffing requirements, SLAs, governance requirements, reporting and measurement of performance, ongoing management, etc. Undertaking the work is hugely more complex and costly. The tender issuer will inevitably be keen to know how you will be handling all of this. You may have all of this up-front and ready to go. Maybe not - then there will be all sorts of new investment required to be ready to undertake the work - training, new or changes to policies and procedures, new monitoring, new compliance etc. How much work is there in getting you ready to be able to do the work?
Complexity of evidence - you are bidding to do a piece of work. In order that you are accepted, they will want to know you can do the work. Simply saying, “Yep, I can do it. Honest” - simply won’t cut it. You will need to provide the evidence that you can. This, together with answering the questions in full, is key to producing a compelling, successful bid. This evidence may be in terms of marketing, or compliance, or governance, or production capability, or Information/Cyber Security, or Social Value, or internal policies and procedures etc. Unless it is a very simple tender, all of the above skills may be necessary to be able to craft a compelling tender. It may require a skill-set much broader than simply good writing skills. Many of these skills we have in-house that we can draw on. All of this enables us to create a high quality, compelling tender for you.
Complexity of competitor capability - there may be a requirement to analyse what your competitors are doing. Usually you have no visibility of who else might be putting in a competing tender bid. But knowing your industry, you can make an educated guess. It may be useful to know what your competitors are doing, or what they can offer that you can’t. All of the skills and areas mentioned above may be required to provide a competent evaluation of your competition. As mentioned above, many of these skills we have in-house that we can draw on - which, again, enables us to create a high quality, compelling tender for you.
Obviously, there is a huge difference in complexity and amount of work between tenders. On the one hand, for example, consider a one person researcher bidding for a technical literature review contract worth £20k. Versus a tender for a contract to decommission a nuclear power plant worth multiple billions of pounds. We have worked on both ends of this spectrum.
Another point about complexity - there is a distinction between length, or word count and complexity. You could have a relatively short tender that is really complex to analyse and put together. Or you could have a much longer one, that is much simpler to put together. In general the greater the complexity the greater the cost, and the greater the skill to pull it all together into a cohesive, compelling narrative. There is more to estimating cost than simply word count. For this reason, we tend to base a quote on the complexity and the amount of work involved, rather than word count.
Of course, getting an idea of how complex it is and how much work it will require is only part of it.
Attention to detail
In order to create a compelling tender, we need to know in detail, how you will undertake the work, and what will be required
before the work starts
doing the actual work
any monitoring and reporting that may be contractually required during or after the work
How much of that resides in your head (or with your team, or in existing policies and procedures) and how much will need to be gathered and collated from any number of different sources, people and departments?
Who will do the work?
Once there is some idea of the scope of this information, and what is required in the ITT we get some inkling of how much work is involved in producing the tender. Especially for smaller, simpler bids (and to reduce costs for you), you can write it up as much as you can as best you can. Then we take over and refine it into a polished, compelling tender.
Alternatively, we undertake to do it all, which means a much greater requirement for our time, hence cost to you. We may use multiple tender writers, with different levels of experience. Hence a daily rate ranging from 350 to 800 per day. Where less experienced tender writers are involved, their work is always checked by the more experienced writers.
Once complete, all tenders we produce go through our Quality Assurance team for proofreading and an independent perspective that all of the tender questions have been fully answered. We take quality seriously and all of our tenders are high quality, giving you the best shot at your tender.
The quoted price will be based on the complexity of the tender, the amount of work required, who does that work and who manages that work. This has nothing to do with the value of the contract the ITT is about.
Managing the Project
Bear in mind also, over and above the work of actually researching and producing the tender document, there is the work of managing the tender project. There will be milestones and deadlines involved. These may be hard milestones and requirements written into the ITT. Or they may be internal deadlines that you set up, the sub-steps that you need to meet in order to meet that final submission deadline. Normally, if you miss that final deadline, you are scuppered - your tender submission will no longer be accepted.
A point we will make time and time again throughout this process - don’t underestimate the amount of time it will take. You have to, have to meet that final deadline. A part of the work of producing a successful tender is managing the timing required to do the work. We do not want a frantic, panic at the very end - that is, unfortunately, all too common. That doesn’t happen by accident, it takes discipline and planning. We can do that, or you can, but it needs to happen. Who does this will impact the price charged.
Getting it done
Based on all of this, we come up with an estimation of the time it will take and the cost to produce a high quality, compelling tender. Bear in mind also, that this is the work we do. Hence we can probably do it much quicker than anyone from your team whose day job isn’t tender writing.
Oh, and, have I mentioned - don’t underestimate the amount of time it will take.
A final thought here, if you are looking to bid for some work, you will be hoping to get that work. Your work, your income, your progress. Investing in a high quality, well-written, compelling tender that fully answers all of the ITT requirements in the format requested… and doing all of that on schedule - that is a sound investment. It is not a cost, it is an investment. How much do you want to win this tender, and what will it mean for you if you do get it?