[Adrian.C]

I have a small contract cleaning business, I have been in the industry for 5 years know, 2 years I set up my own company.  The business is doing well with approx 50 contracts won, emplying some 100 people.

We have a variety of different contract from retail, leisure and office type business.

We have acheived Investor In People accreditation and in the final stages of completing IS0 9001.

So you know have a picture of our organisation, I recently was invited to tender for 7 schools around the North West, when the documentation came through it seamed very complexed, my previouse experiance with tendering have been quite basic.

Although our quotations look very profesional I felt I was lacking in experiance to complete this Tender.

My question to any one out there is:

Are there any training courses in completion of such tenders as I feel that the future will require me to complete such tenders.


I would appreciate any advise on the above

Thank You


Adrian

[dunny19]

i belive that www.prochem.co.uk have traiing courses in sales and marketing, may be worth ringing them to see if they can help,

[Musicman]

Hi Adrian, I've tendered for a number of schools and similar contracts and to my knowledge there aren't any courses to help complete such tenders.

(Prochem, being suppliers to the carpet cleaning industry, will not cover this sort of thing in their courses.)

Is the information you are seeking along the lines of all the policies (Environmental, Health & Safety, Equal Opportunities, Staffing, Training etc) or more to do with the calculating of hours required etc?

If it's the latter I suggest you obtain a copy of BICSc Best Value productivity figures.

If it's the former maybe you could ask the organisation responsible for submitting the tenders for some help.

With tenders there is no substitute for experience so maybe if you don't win any of the schools this time around you could treat it as part of the 'learning curve'.

Congratulations on your business, it certainly seems that you are heading in the right direction.

[WavieDavie]

Adrian,

Check this out . . . http://www.build-a-business.com/ you can subscribe and get weekly articles, and it just so happens this week's is about proposals and/or tenders!

Fill in a bit more of your profile - including your email obviously - and I'll forward this week's article to you. You'll probably have to adapt it a bit from Americanese but I'm sure you can handle that.

All the best.

Ooops, if you click on the link and scroll down to "Read my current issue"  you can read this week's issue straight from the site.

[Adrian.C]

Thank you for your time regarding my enquiry, the info you gave will help.  Firstly it is not a problem with any documentation as with applying and going through all the documentation for ISO 9001 we have all our policies in place.

I think the main problem was the schools where asking for costings on various areas and additional work in sq meters and sq ft where appropriate, My experience has come from being able to look
@ a job and know just how much to cost for it, not by doing a load of measurements.

The contract also involved the Transfer of some 70 + staff so TUPE would have to be applied to the costs, so the bare bones of the contract was quite simple to calculate.

I will have a look at the site that you suggested and also have a look through BISCs.

My e-mail address is adrian@amsupportservices.com

Thanks Lads

Adrian