How to win competitive bids for R&D projects

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Winning Project Work

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What is it? Why do it?
We are all salesmen
…at least we all have a part to play in the sales process
Projects often must be won, certainly in the consulting and contract R&D domain, but also
often in a product business as there are generally more project opportunities than funding
Even if not leading the acquisition team, most project managers need sales competencies
to play their key role – putting together a commercially competitive cost of delivery

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Commercial Best Practice
Miller Heiman founded in 1978
The New Conceptual Selling 
The New Strategic Selling 
The New Successful Large Account Management 
Shipley Associates founded in 1972: “We Help Clients Win Business!”
Shipley Proposal Guide, Fourth Edition 
Shipley Capture Guide, Third Edition 
Shipley Business Development Lifecycle Guide 
Association of Proposal Management Professionals 
American association, founded by Shipley in 1988, offering Foundation, Practitioner and
Professional Level training and certification
UK Chapter founded in 2001
Huthwaite International founded in 1974
SPIN® Selling, by Neil Rackham 
Based on extensive research into what makes a successful salesperson
“The world’s most validated selling skills model, at the heart of consultative, B2B selling”
MHI Global founded in 2014 by merger of Miller Heiman, Huthwaite, AchieveGlobal,
Impact Learning Systems and Channel Enablers

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How is it done?
● Brief bid description
● Set bid strategy
● Schedule reviews & submission
● Set bid resources
● Qualify bid: Bid/No Bid decision
● Set & release bid funding
A to F
● Define Project Category
by value, risk & complexity
● Match PM & TA competence to Category
● Set governance level by Category
1 to 4
● Define business risk
● Set bid authorisation level
● Document Bid
- Confidentiality Agreement
- Services Agreement
- Proposal & Commercial offer
- Project Schedule & Estimation risk graphs
- Risk Register
- SHE (Safety, Health & Environment) Risk Assessment
- other documents as required
● Define Project Cost
- Cost without risk
- Risk Contingency
- Estimation risk
- General risk
- Delivery resource profile
- Payment profile & Cash flow
● Define Project Price
- Offer price
- Negotiating strategy
● Approve Submission

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Key Project Manager Tasks
● Brief bid description
● Set bid strategy
● Schedule reviews & submission
● Set bid resources
● Qualify bid: Bid/No Bid decision
● Set & release bid funding
A to F
● Define Project Category
by value, risk & complexity
● Match PM & TA competence to Category
● Set governance level by Category
1 to 4
● Define business risk
● Set bid authorisation level
● Document Bid
- Confidentiality Agreement
- Services Agreement
- Proposal & Commercial offer
- Project Schedule & Estimation risk graphs
- Risk Register
- SHE (Safety, Health & Environment) Risk Assessment
- other documents as required
● Define Project Cost
- Cost without risk
- Risk Contingency
- Estimation risk
- General risk
- Delivery resource profile
- Payment profile & Cash flow
● Define Project Price
- Offer price
- Negotiating strategy
● Approve Submission

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Plan
● Brief bid description
● Set bid strategy
● Schedule reviews & submission
● Set bid resources
● Qualify bid: Bid/No Bid decision
● Set & release bid funding
Bid Authorisation
Group
Bid Authorisation
Bid Documents
Review
Red Team
Review
Bid Submission
Approval
Group
Bid Submission
Approval
Bid
Submission
All Bids Bids at or above: A1 All Bids Bids at or above: B1 All Bids Bids at or above: A1 All Bids
Brief bid description
The need or requirement that the bid must satisfy
Set bid strategy
How we propose to win – our Unique Selling Points
Schedule reviews & submission
Set bid resources
The proposed delivery leadership team should deliver the bid
A dedicated bid manager can add significant value to larger bids
Qualify bid: Bid/No Bid decision
A simple questionnaire may ensure effort is only directed towards bids likely to be won
Set & release bid funding
What will it cost to bid? What are we willing to spend bidding?

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Meet overall customer objectives
Senior internal sponsor
Project team management
Achieve project objectives
Primary customer contact
Project
Reviewer
Project
Manager
Technical
Authority
Technical strategy
Achieve project objectives
Manage Technical Risk
Higher value/risk/complexity:
Low value/risk/complexity:
PM
PM or TA or Engineer
Bid & Project Leadership

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Categorise
Define Project Category
By categorising the proposed delivery project according to
value, risk and complexity, in a simple manner, it is possible to:
1) Match PM & TA competence to Category
Ensures the most competent (and few & expensive) people are used effectively
Helps avoid availability as the only selection criteria
Reduces delivery risk
Aids PM development by scaling successive project category and so growing competence
2) Set governance level by Category
Using oversight effectively
Avoids unnecessary cost and bureaucracy
Enables dashboard / report filtering based on value, risk and complexity
A to F
● Define Project Category
by value, risk & complexity
● Match PM & TA competence to Category
● Set governance level by Category

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Authorise
Define business risk
Commercial risk arising from the proposed project
Defined by financial, corporate, export, tax and other elements
deemed by the business as requiring senior authorisation
Set bid authorisation level
Define who in the business should authorise the bid submission
Based on the business risk analysis
1 to 4
● Define business risk
● Set bid authorisation level

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Document
Confidentiality Agreement
Defining confidentiality responsibilities of the parties
Services Agreement
Terms and conditions on which our bid is based
Proposal & Commercial Offer
A Proposal or Statement of Work describes the
project our bid offers to deliver for the stated price
Project Schedule & Estimation risk graphs
Project Schedule: timeline, tasks, order, dependencies and resources to deliver the project
Estimation risk handled via range estimating: estimation risk graphs depict a spread of results
(dates or costs) against probability and can define bespoke project estimation contingency
Risk Register
Documents relevant uncertainty and how we propose to manage significant risks
SHE Risk Assessment
Safety, Health or Environmental risks and how we propose to manage them such that the risk
of harm to people is kept below an acceptable level
● Document Bid
- Confidentiality Agreement
- Services Agreement
- Proposal & Commercial offer
- Project Schedule & Estimation risk graphs
- Risk Register
- SHE (Safety, Health & Environment) Risk Assessment
- other documents as required

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Cost
Cost without risk
The cost if there were no uncertainty
Risk Contingency
The contingency set aside to manage risks that occur
despite any mitigation or enhancement tasks
Derived from two analyses: estimation risk and general risk
Estimation risk
Uncertainty associated with estimation: range estimation can define bespoke contingency
General risk
General uncertainty: risk register data and discussion typically determines contingency
Delivery resource profile
Describes the deployment and type of resources needed to deliver the project
Payment profile & Cash flow
A payment profile to manage a desired cash flow between spend and income
● Define Project Cost
- Cost without risk
- Risk Contingency
- Estimation risk
- General risk
- Delivery resource profile
- Payment profile & Cash flow

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Price & Approve
Offer Price
Our price to deliver the project
Cost plus: fixed or firm price / time & materials or effort based
Value pricing: based on a belief of the project value to the buyer
Priced to win: often below cost, offset by resulting gain elsewhere
Negotiating Strategy
Contingency may be built into an opening price to allow for anticipated negotiating down
The offer may be contingent on other things, e.g. part of a package
Approve Submission
Permission to submit the bid, usually based on scale
● Define Project Price
- Offer price
- Negotiating strategy
● Approve Submission

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Summary
Use the same PM and Technical Authority to bid and deliver
This ensures buy-in of the PM and TA but also a PM and TA should be the ones with the
required competence to define the cost and level of risk
Price and Cost are not necessarily related
Only scope or delivery strategy can be changed if required to meet a budget or price target
This needs delivery team buy-in, supported by a realistic plan and risk analysis
Avoid potential conflict of interest
Where the same person is responsible for both cost and price there is a temptation for
short term thinking, especially if that person is not responsible for delivery
Match the level of governance to the project value, risk and complexity
Maximise the time available to produce the bid documents – these define the bid quality

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Author Profile
In my board role I led a team of 22 Project Managers and 5 Quality Engineers, and ensured Roke’s £79m
project portfolio delivered better than budget profit. I set-up and ran a virtual PMO and created REP,
the Roke Engineering Process, also managing the engineering tools to support it.
After 4 years as an electronics engineer for Siemens, achieving Chartered Engineer,
I moved into project management for 14 years, at Siemens and Roke Manor Research.
Successfully delivering Roke’s most challenging whole lifecycle product developments
on time and under budget led to a role as Director and board member for 6 years.
In 2013 I returned to hands-on project management as Programme Director at
Cambridge Consultants, founder member of the Cambridge Science Park.
Creator of the APM corporate accredited PM Excellence Programme,
I chaired a quarterly PM forum to share best practice and built a
supportive PM community. I coached seven PMs to RPP, five to PQ,
and all passed APMP.
These investments in PM professionalism led to a turn-around and
annual improvement in project results across a 400 project portfolio
and delivered an above budget performance in five consecutive years
with profits totalling £7.9m above budget.
Passionate advocate of PM professionalism, Fellow of the APM and
the IET and author of articles published in Project and PM Today.
Professional Development
Winning Project Work
Planning
Estimating
Risk Management
Earned Value Management
Change Control
Stakeholder Management
3 Steps to Professional Project Management: Case Study
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