Bid to Win - Grants and Public Sector Contracts

Course details

Course provider: Bidright UK

Eligibility: You must be 19 or older on and must reside in West Yorkshire

Industry: Education and Training, Welfare to Work, Voluntary and Community and Third Sector, Adult Health and Social Care, Arts and Culture (any industry that is involved delivering goods, products or services public sector)

Dates: August 2024 - December 2024. 

Courses run 2-3 times per month and start on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays either 10am-12pm or 1pm-3pm - same day and time each week.

Duration: 6 weeks (20 guided learning hours) – 6 x 2 hour training sessions with 8 hours 1:1 support between 1st and 6th sessions.

Venue: Online (in person available upon demand)

Overview/summary of training

The course is based on Bidright’s 13 years’ experience of submitting over 1000 bids with a 75%-90% success rate and contracts won in excess of £200m.

Delivered in a practical and interactive way by our Bid Experts, each workshop module is followed by a personalised one to one session to relate the knowledge and skills learnt into a real life situation. That could be a live tender or grant application, reviewing a recently submitted bid or aligned to new responsibilities and opportunities.

In the Bid to Win modules you will learn how to: 

• Understand bidding jargon and “read between the lines” of bid specifications.
• Plan and price your project to achieve a competitive edge.
• Increase your scores by understanding how to tailor your answer to the question.
• Make sure you don’t miss out on those “easy scores”.
• Improve your bid-writing immediately through implementing quick style changes.
• Gain full marks on those “tricky questions” such as social value, risk and quality assurance.
• Avoid common pitfalls in writing and submitting your bid.
• Improve your technique through analysing model answers.
• Overcome your particular bid-writing challenges with advice from top bid experts.

Course Content

• Session 1. Opportunities & Readiness: how to source and evaluate bidding opportunities, with an overview of the best bidding portals. Focus on planning, information gathering, and developing effective profiling and pricing strategies to ensure you are fully prepared to bid.
• Session 2. Preparation: crucial steps of dissecting buyer requirements, passing supplier selection questionnaires, preparing delivery plans and collating supporting documents within a ‘Bid Library’.
• Session 3. Writing: how to craft compelling content with the right language, format, and style. Practical examples on answering common questions related to delivery, staffing, management, risk, and quality.
• Session 4. Winning: explore win themes and develop responses that stand out, elevate bid scores by gaining easy marks and avoiding common pitfalls.
• Session 5. Review & Submission focuses on the review process, how to proof your bid, effectively trim word counts and refine bids, and avoid common submission errors.
• Session 6. Social Value: understand its objectives, how to meaningfully respond to them and other public sector themes, avoiding common pitfalls and adopting an overall strategy.

Level: Novice to Intermediate 

What next?

The knowledge and skills gained through the programme are aimed to develop your understanding of bid writing and management practices, and ultimately go on to secure new grants and/or contracts for your employer, or for your clients if self-employed. 

The course will support you in the following progressions:

• Added responsibility in your current role
• Gaining a new role with your current employer

New opportunities and contracts (for self-employed)