In our experience most firms make a bid or no-bid decision; fewer keep a record of it. The notice gets discussed, someone says “not for us”, and three months later the same buyer publishes the same framework under a new reference and the discussion happens again from the beginning.
The session
Every response we support starts with a half-day session with the people who can say yes or no. The pipeline report is on the table with its shortlist and, for each notice, the points to prepare. The output is a decision against each notice and the reasons for it, in one or two lines, including the ones declined.
That sounds like administration. It is the most useful thing the session produces, for three reasons.
It stops the same notice being evaluated twice
A recorded no-bid with “scale: needs a dedicated on-site team of twelve, we have four” tells the next pipeline report to stop surfacing that buyer’s hard FM contracts until the headcount changes. It also tells the report what to show instead: the buyer’s electrical-only lots, if there are any.
It makes the yes decisions honest
When the no-bids are written down with reasons, the yes decisions have to be too. “Bid: fit score 72, both named credentials held, framework capped at two suppliers, published 30 June with no deadline yet, assign a lead today” is a decision a board can read. “Bid: it’s a big one” is not.
It gives the board a record of what was declined
The question most owners cannot answer is “what did we not bid for last year, and why?” That is where the real strategy sits. If every no-bid in a year says “credential”, the credential is the investment. If every no-bid says “Northern Ireland”, the second base is the question. The record turns a year of instinct into a list.
What it costs
Half a day, once per notice, with the leadership in the room. The pipeline report has already done the scoring, so the session is about judgement, not reading. And the record goes back into the next report, so nothing is asked twice.
That session is step one of four in RFP support. The shortlist it works from comes from the tender pipeline report.
Sources
- The example flags (“scale”, “credential”) are preparation points from the anonymised worked example described on the method page.
- How the bid or no-bid session fits the four-step process: RFI and RFP support.