CompeTender

Abstract

Winning tenders is vital to the acquisition of work for project-based organizations (Philbin, 2008; Morris & Pinto, 2004). This necessity is due to the fact that within The Netherlands 80% of all revenue within the GWW sector is initiated by the government and therefore must be awarded through a tender procedure consistent to European procurement legislation (PianoO, 2018a). As tender legislation and the amount of available work changed significantly over the last decades, the approach of tenders by supplying organizations has also changed. Here, tender management appeared as an emerging discipline that focusses on adding value by professionalizing the approach of the tender process within supplying organizations. Besides, it incorporates information from the entire organization in order to persuade the client to accept the bid. Tender management in this research is considered to be the management of bid development by supplying organizations.

As employees are likely to perform better when their competencies meet their job requirements, this research focusses on establishing a competency-based profile. This profile will eventually help the approach of tenders mature and therefore enlarge the chance of success for supplying organizations in the tender process. In order to establish this competency-based profile, the following research question was established:

Which competencies are important for tender management when preparing a bid for different infrastructure project types in an engineering firm?

The competency-based profile for tender management professionals will be drawn up on the basis of a combination of literature review and the development of a serious game. The literature review aims to explore three concepts ('tender management', 'competencies' and 'project types') in order to develop elements of the game. The game enables tender management professionals to share their thoughts on important competencies for tender management by compiling competency-based teams.

Based on the findings retrieved from both literature and CompeTender, the following conclusions could be drawn: Being creative is very important for creating innovative tender proposals, which are fit for purpose and have a surprising effect on the client (distinctive character). Besides that, this competency is related to the development of new approaches (innovations), which help to reduce both cost and time. The importance of having environmental awareness and being customer-oriented follows from the position of tender management between the client and the supplying organization. Analysing is an important competency for tender management due to the obligation to completely understand the customer demand, which often concerns a complex problem. Planning & organizing needs to be incorporated as tender processes usually take place in a short time-span, but require involvement with a lot of different people. Finally, being cost-conscious is very important, as bids are usually judged on both price and quality.

For a differentiation in important competencies for different project types no sufficient underpinning was found, except for the fact that being creative becomes even more important when tendering for contractor services.

In order to distinct themselves from the competition, it is recommended to select tender management professionals mainly on their creativity and whether they have environmental awareness, are customer oriented, are cost-conscious and are good analysers. This will lead to a higher quality of bids, which reflect distinctive value and therefore outcompete the competition.