Tender Planning

Hi Hans



Welcome to planning planet.



As a general rule it is not a good idea to resurrect very old threads that have been abandonded years ago.



We welcome your input on the current topics.



Best regards



Mike Testro

My opinion, the project planner should go first reviewing the tender. It is important when it comes to scope of supply required. The planner can roughly plan and develop a Project Execution Plan.

Neiman / Clive



I agree with some good points you mention and ofcourse there shouldn’t be a single hard and fast rule that doesn’t allow for an individuals specialisms.



Also I think the industry and market you are working within may also dictate a little to it all and the skill set of people best suited to the roles..



From my situation say multiple building construction projects £5 to £30m with a team of planners to manage, I guess the thing is when I see somebody who was a "tender planner" for 10 years it concerns me.



True they may have a whole series of pro-forma’s and a good understanding of the bid process, but being truly divorced from the delivery side of projects and the place you need to be to manage or contribute on a live basis could mean possibly (but to be fair not always or certainly) a lack of recognition in tender planning.



That said, im with you Clive there is certainly something to said about a bunch of guys who just do tender planning, at times, a demanding and time consuming process among other things and when things are busy on the estimating front it certainly can eat your time and attention.



But given the choice for me, a rounded planner is the ideal model, being able to successfully manage live project planning and tender planning takes a good well organised person who can switch on and off different skills.

In our company, it’s the Planner that gets shot first....!

I agree Paul, but...



some people happen to be good at tender planning, and others at planning out on site and an organisation must take this into account.



on the best projects this happens, when you get a project that starts to go wrong, then a tendency of the Management is to move / replace people, starting with the Project Manager, then the planner then other people start leaving too and you lose any continuity.

As an aside, I think that to have tender only planners or consquentially construction only planners is not the best way forward as a business model.



A best value model in planning terms in my mind would be to have a Planner who owns a project through from Pre-Qual, tender, construction and into post-completion stages. This would provide a better more rounded use and gaining of expertise to both the individual planner, the current project and subsequent projects.



Circumstances may be that this cant happen on each and every project but i believe it is where we should be starting from.

PS I prefer the thumb screws to the cat-o-nine-tails - whatever takes your fancy, eh!

Having worked on tender planning on and off for 15 years (more on than off) I would agree with you Andrew, it can be very satisfying when you win contracts, although perhaps not very rewarding in terms of money or recognition within the company.

I do also understand the satisfaction in producing the really well thought out tender schedule which proves that you can do the job faster than others, and meets the clients objectives, whether stated or not.

HI,

An other factor when considering the UK market is that tender planners are office based which can sometimes be more constrictive than thier collegues based on site. Site teams may have regular team building events (otherwise known as P*ss ups!

The Office based tender planner will not receive any sort of travel allowance, whereas the project based planner may get all his home to work travel paid Tax Free (subject to Inalnd Revenue regulations)



Having worked on both sides of the fence I can say that tender planning can be very rewarding IF you work for the right company and the pre construction team know what they are doing!

Merely ONE knot, Clive??? Make mine a cat-O-nine-tails please!

Dunno yet, Nieman. It’ll be another few weeks before we find out.



I must admit that I like to use the tender programme to really impress the client. My contention is that, if we can compile a really good tender programme, then he’ll see that we are capable of understanding the job. Moreover, I always impress upon our teams that the programme is NOT just to be a pretty picture, but a fully verifiable document. Therefore, we need to begin compiling it immediately. Sometimes it works, and sometimes not.

Congratulations james, that is very satisfying. The next most satisfying thing to actually winning the job - did you?



Tender planning is demanding Eliza, and unsatisfying, because people who know little or nothing about the job sit at tender settlement meetings and make global judgements about the contract period (Like - that is too long, take 8 weeks off the programme before submission - on a 100 week job) You also get the tender documents about 1 week before tender return, marketing having sat on them deciding whether to submit a tender for 6 weeks, then everyone wonders why we didn’t win / won the job because of the mistakes in the programme / tender estimate. You end up working late into the night and all weekend and all with little or no recognition, and certainly not in the pay packet. Why would anyone want a job like that????

Yeah, I fully understand your sentiments. But just to let you know, our marketing guy very kindly e-mailed us and told us that the client thought our tender was "...near faultless - in terms of providing the information wanted, its presentation, clarity and content."



Now that’s what I like to hear!!!



James.

I totally agree with Clive.



There are two kinds of people, those who do the work and those who take the credit.... The second group belongs to Marketing people...and they take credit for all the hard work done on Tenders by proposal team.



Once job awarded it come in a flash news....Awarded Oil & Gas project, an EPC contract worth 600 billion....Key Player Mr.Phil D’souza -- Marketting Manager