Tender. A word that draws groans of despair from all who hear it, even more so when the tender relates to work through the public sector. So why is this? Dean Parker, event production manager at Wilde Ones explains.

The whole principle of the tender process is based on creating competition, and with regard to public procurement, is now law under the Public Contracts Regulations 2006. Already there's a problem - 'public procurement' - second paragraph in and we've introduced jargon rather than plain English.

This piece of legislation came into force on 31 January 2006, and as far as I'm aware there wasn't a great deal of opportunity, if any, to consult on the issue.

Even worse is the acceptance of the legislation - it's here, we can't fight it, so we've got to get on with it. I've talked to a number of people in the outdoor events industry about tenders (and those outside our industry), and haven't found anybody who thinks that the system works well. Everybody understands the principle behind tenders, it's just that the process fails on pretty much every level.

An initial failing are the hoops that have to be jumped through just to get a chance to tender - the 'pre-qualification' or 'business questionnaire' . Frequently these documents are aimed at medium to large businesses, not at the small business or sole trader.

Such documents are frequently written in legalese rather than plain English. Ironically, in completing the form, you will usually be asked to include an equal opportunities policy, a policy designed to prevent discrimination and to allow equality of opportunity. Yet the document you are completing usually discriminates against anybody who hasn't spent their life studying law.

A major problem with the questionnaires themselves is that they are just exercises in ticking boxes, showing that you have a multitude of written policies on your shelves, no matter what your actual working practices might actually be. Obviously, if it's written down it must be official.

If I was convinced that the paperwork that was sent in was being read, then I might feel a little more convinced that it was worthwhile, but I honestly can't believe that the recipients even have time the to read and understand it.

Plain English please

Recently I was told that councils were 'getting better' at removing jargon from their documents. Getting better? That's not really good enough. The "Plain English Campaign' was launched in 1979 with the shredding of hundreds of government forms in Parliament Square. Ironic then that 30 years on, an appalling number of public sector documents seem to have been written in complete defiance of it.

It is clear that whoever creates these documents have no idea of what they are trying to achieve. If the advert was for a job for a member of the public, it would be in a multitude of languages, in braille, on audio, and written in clear, simple language that anybody could understand. And first and foremost would be the title of the job, followed by the tasks required to be fulfilled.

Somehow, when it comes to work for businesses, these elementary principles are completely ignored. I recently received a 54 page tender document from a council for a festival. It wasn't until after wading through 46 pages of legalese did it specify what the job was!

Far from encouraging healthy competition, the way these documents are written is actively putting off companies from submitting tenders.

With regards to the actual tenders themselves, the obvious question is what qualifies the author to produce the document? I have read a multitude of tenders that are appallingly written, and fail to provide applicants the information they need to complete the tender. Why? Because the 'procurers' writing them are not experienced in the subject matter. Tenders are being written by procurement departments, rather than by the people who might know what they actually require.

Getting three quotes for a supplier of your stationery requirements is vastly different to appointing an organiser of an event. Any single aspect of an event – structures, fencing, power etc. – can have so many different variables it is impossible to give accurate costs. And the reality is, it's the cost (and not the value as is often claimed) that is the deciding factor for making the final decision regarding the appointment.

And here lies the biggest bugbear. To produce an accurate and thorough tender document. an applicant can end up completing up to 50 per cent (if not more) of the whole workload of the entire job. Ultimately plans have to be submitted that have cost hundreds, if not thousands of pounds to produce.
Immediately, this carves out the smaller businesses who do not have the time, resources and finance to enter this process. Which is somewhat contradictory to the goals of 'increasing competition'.

Even more frustrating is that this highly valuable and sensitive business information is then being handed over to the procurer, essentially free of charge. Unlike a creative concept, it is very difficult to claim intellectual copyright over an event or stewarding plan, which is why they are often ripped off wholesale by unscrupulous organisers. Too many procurers seem to regard these as 'free' consultancy studies. Maybe this is why the procedure is called 'procurement' - 'theft' doesn't have quite the same degree of respectability about it!

Simply does it

I am not aware of any study or effort to demonstrate that the tender process actually does work, and that the system DOES create competition and achieve best value. My experience is that it is ineffective, and so wieldy, costly and time-consuming that it actively discourages smaller organisations and individuals from partaking. Consequently I believe it is now time for a thorough review into the public procurement process.

Many thousands of pounds of public money are being spent on the current system, with local authorities now having dedicated procurement departments and students even doing entire degrees in procurement! All other aspects of our business practices undergo regular review, so it's about time this process is similarly required to justify itself.

After all, even the evidence from the authorities themselves indicate that it isn't working. Recently I've received numerous invitations to seminars purporting to explain how to get work with local authorities. These are frequently entitled 'Understanding public procurement'. That title alone indicates something's desperately wrong. If you need a seminar to explain the process, then that process is too complicated.

I'd be far happier if the money being spent on such seminars had been spent wisely in the first place, creating a system that was clear, simple and useable by all.

A system that is fair. Is that too much to hope for?

The above piece was published in the December issue of Stand Out Magazine.
In March, Mish Toszeghi of KP Events discussed his experiences with the following article:

TENDER PERSUASION

In December, tenders brought tears to the eyes of Dean Parker, production manager of Wilde Ones. It seems the topic has touched some nerves. Here, Mish Toszeghi, owner and director of KP Events, discusses his procurement experiences, as the ugly topic of tendering rears its head. Again…

A few months ago I was invited to attend a 2012 seminar for London-based businesses. Its purpose was to clarify the structure of the principal organising bodies and to explain the procurement processes that have been put into place. It was an interesting session and I was reassured to hear their pledge to ensure that small and medium-sized London businesses would be very well represented within the pool of organisations charged with the many tasks of putting on an Olympic Games. More on this later.

As a result of the “pep-talk” I enthusiastically registered my company on a number of procurement websites – among them competefor.com and supply2gov.uk. Although Olympic or Cultural Olympiad event management offers haven’t really started appearing yet, my registration did coincide with the quietest time my small events company has experienced for a number of years. And so, for the first time, I began that joyous task of writing speculative tenders, completing pre-qualification questionnaires (PQQ) and compiling a formidable list of company policies. I have dozens of them now.

Nobody would disagree with the idea that just having a health and safety policy is a worthy thing – it means at the very least that attention has been drawn to the fact that a minimum level of health and safety standards is expected of the company in question. That said, it proves absolutely nothing about how seriously an organisation takes the issue, and indeed whether any measures to address health and safety issues are actually ever taken. On the upside, it does mean that someone, somewhere a little further down the litigious paper trail, can tick the box (and presumably sleep easy while we event organisers stress over ensuring that our events actually do take place safely and trouble-free).

The same can be said of our working with children, lost children, environment and sustainability, financial procedures, quality assurance, equal opportunities, complaints procedure policies and the rest. What’s next? Our employees’ personal hygiene policy or our dealing with animals injured on-site policy? Of course, we can have a laugh about the absurdity of much of it, but the reality is that without having these various documents in place, you will be limiting your potential success in the tender stakes.

With the credit crunch seemingly hitting our industry a little harder now than it did last year, many more companies are actively seeking out contracts with the result that any openly advertised projects are attracting huge numbers of applications. The first hurdle is usually the PQQ, and if your policies aren’t in place, you’re presumably a likely candidate for the “do not invite to tender” pile.

Reality bites

It seems that the little companies have two choices. Either they employ a consultancy to examine their organisation and create customised company policies that are accurate and relevant, or they just botch something off the Internet. The former will generally not be a viable proposition to many smaller companies that simply don’t have the budgets available to spend on formal policy writing, so they opt for the latter. The result is of course fairly meaningless – it’s just a load more paperwork – but a seeming necessity in the game.
Now the other part of the game is the tender itself.

In the last three months I have tendered for six publicly-funded London event projects. While one is still outstanding, the outcome of the other five has been one failure to get beyond the PQQ, another failure at the proposal stage and three shortlisted proposals that resulted in an invitation in to meet the procurers. In two of these cases, I had a good time meeting them, got on well with very nice and sensible people, came away feeling positive, and soon after, received a note how much they enjoyed meeting me, how grateful they were that I had gone to the trouble of putting together such a detailed proposal… and that they had decided to offer the contract to someone else! In the third case, I’m pleased to say we were actually awarded the contract.

Disappointing as it is each time when a good chunk of work comes to nothing, we all have to accept the reality which is that these opportunities will only rarely have a happy ending. It’s not so much the competition against which we are battling, but whether what you believe to be a genuine tender is actually that.

Fair game?

Organisations are now obliged to tender out anything above a certain financial threshold – whether they want to or not. It’s no surprise, therefore, that in many situations a procurer will know precisely who they want to appoint – it’s the company with whom they have a long-standing established working relationship; the company that they trust and that they know will deliver – on time, on budget and with a smile. Why on earth should they look elsewhere? Yes, they need to be confident that they’re paying a fair rate, but there are far more straightforward ways of assessing that.

Instead, they launch into a full-blooded procurement process, define and weight the parameters in such a way that their preferred supplier has an advantage, and then appoint them in the fullness of time – effectively, a show trial.

This is all fine – it’s right that their favoured supplier gets the contract, as they have shown themselves to be worthy partners in the past. It’s also right – or at least entirely understandable – that people will be prepared to “bend the rules” a little in order to facilitate the outcome they desire.

The unfortunate fallout in all of this is that each time a tender of this nature is put into the public domain, it sets into motion a chain of wasted endeavour. Lots of people spending lots of time doing lots of work… for nothing.

Which brings me back to one of the events in my catalogue of recent pitches – the failure at proposal stage. This was a one-off event for a London Borough for which I submitted a 20-plus page document. I think it is fair to say that it was an extensive, well-presented, thoroughly researched and detailed document that addressed everything highlighted in the brief. It also came from a consortium of organisations, which indisputably have the credentials, background and experience to fulfil the remit. The response was a two-line note stating that they had received “a number of higher quality applications” and that we had not been successful. And as a nice touch they had addressed me in the email as “Dear John” (which I can assure you is not my name).

I was of course hugely irritated by this and wrote to their chief executive to make my point. I have absolutely no issue with the fact that my ideas may not have appealed – that’s perfectly OK. I was, however, deeply incensed by the tone of the response and the screaming absence of even a modicum of “politesse”. Any procurer that initiates a public tender really ought, at the very least, to adhere to the absolute basic standards of business etiquette in the process. That means a courteous response and some coherent, constructive feedback. Oh, and getting the name right.

Of course the raison d’être for the policy demands of tenderers is all to do with countering nepotism and fraud, as well as creating a fairer playing field. I’m not convinced that it achieves that. I actually think that in the long-term, the principal effect will be analogous to what has happened in the grocery market, with butchers, bakers, fish-mongers and green-grocers in terminal decline while the big supermarkets flourish.
Currently, the “Big Four” in the UK’s supermarket world account for more than a 75 per cent share of the grocery market. We’re not quite there in the event world, but with the smaller organisations being nudged out by unreasonable demands, I’d put good money on it going that way.

And so back to the Olympic Games – and the “jobs for the boys” rhetoric. Will they really be giving any significant event projects to small businesses?
" Citius, Altius, Fortius" (Swifter, Higher, Stronger) – the motto bestowed upon the Games back in 1921 – though I’m sure it was meant as a reference to the athletes and not the contractors!