Help Guide to Winning Tenders and Acing PQQs

“If you can keep your head whilst all around you they are losing theirs…” 

Rudyard Kipling

“… you must be a master of the PQQ submission.” 

Mark Priestman (with an exceedingly profound apology to Mr Kipling)

Every successful specialist contractor knows that projects are largely won and lost through a contractor’s return of pre-qualification questionnaires (P.Q.Q.s), preferred partner applications and tender submissions.

Whilst contractors spend much time, rightly so, showcasing their diversity, environmental, sustainability and quality process credentials… 

Spare some thought for another potential major selling point in your armory:

“COMPETENCY”

"Hmm!"  I hear you say. 

How do we pedestal our ‘skills’?  It can indeed be like playing ‘pin-the-tail on the jelly.’

Three very useful resources may assist you to tick all the necessary boxes in your clients mind on the subject of your firm's and your employee’s competency:

The Construction (Design & Management) Regulations 2007 places the legal responsibility on just about everyone involved in a construction project to check the competency of workers, supervisors, managers and other professionals. The H.S.E. (Health & Safety Executive) stress the matter this way on their website:

 “If you are engaging a person or organisation to carry out construction work for you, then you need to make a reasonable judgement of their competence based on evidence…There are many industry card schemes which can help in judging competence. However, the possession of a card by an individual is only one indication of competence. You are expected to make efforts to establish what qualifications and experience the cardholder has.”

Good News for you hopefully as a correctly CSCS (Construction Skills Certification Scheme) carded workforce with N.V.Q. (National Vocational Qualification) achievements can indeed evidence such competency!

The UK Contractor Group is a powerful body made up of many of the leading constructors in Britain.  The UKCG have repeatedly endorsed the CSCS scheme and even spot-check sites to ensure not just CSCS card take up, but that each person has the right card and indentures for the work they are carrying out. 

In endorsing CSCS, they naturally endorse the NVQ as a method of establishing a persons competency against an agreed national standard by independent persons. 

In respects to health and safety they also highly recommend take up of the respective Safety-Plus programme for your operatives, supervisors and managers.

The CSCS card has become the industry standard for evidencing the competency of the holder.  So you firm's take up of carded operatives, supervisors and managers is something worth highlighting on tender and PQQ submissions.

The NHTGs Memorandum of Understanding is a cross-organisational agreement between bodies such as the CITB (Construction Industry Training Group, also previously known as ConstructionSkills), the NHTG (National Heritage Training Group) and English Heritage, suffice to say for now, if your workers hold the gold CSCS card with a heritage skill indenture, you really need to be pedestooling this documents objectives when you are participating in 'beauty parades' with potential buyers, clients, architects etc.

For a copy of the NHTG Memorandum of Understanding, [click here]

To return to the main contents page, [click here]

© Mark Priestman

Priestman Associates LLP

blog.priestmanweb@gmail.com