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RSSThe world of public authority tenders
03 Sep 09
| 2 CommentsDoes anyone out there have a fail-safe way of filling in pre-qualification forms? Of course not! We’re even sending Diana on a course to learn about them. I’d really like to get a group of Local Authority procurement people in a room to justify why they are all different and admit which bits are completely arbitrary.
The scoring system for example, it’s all in the weighting, and unless we understand it, we just don’t know if a job is worth pursuing. The forms are so long, it’s a serious investment devoting time to these things and if there’s a ‘killer question’ in there it’s an utter waste of time.
For example the trading for more than one year (or sometimes 3 years) clause that pops up a lot. We have tons of experience running particular types of projects but if we wont be considered until we have the right number of years accounts it seems pointless proceeding.
Comments
Kelly Clark
Mon 12 Oct 2009 11:20
It does seem to be a vicious circle but it is worth going through the system a couple of times, to get feedback. It will be interesting to see if the feedback is consistent across local authorities!
Andrew Baker
Mon 12 Oct 2009 11:21
I got a call from one of the LPAs we submitted a qualification bid to recently. They gave me some feedback on why we didn't get the work that was very useful.
The main issue (which is highly weighted) was the fact that, as a new start-up we cannot provide three years' accounts. Obviously this is quite a serious problem for us and there is not a lot we can do about it.
So not point wasting time on PQQs, we’ll continue monitoring what is being issued so we keep and understanding of the market but we concentrate our efforts on getting all the elements in place that will help us to market ourselves to our known contacts (H&S policy (done), Employee Handbook (done), ISO 9001 (three months to go before audit), sustainability statement (work in progress).
We have learnt a good deal from doing these applications so it has not been time wasted and in two and half years time we will be able to hit the ground running.