How to Write a Bid Proposal to Win UK Contracts

Writing a winning bid proposal starts long before you type the first word. It begins with a crucial decision: should you even bid at all?

Get this right, and you save yourself from burning days or even weeks on tenders you have no realistic chance of winning.

The Bid/No-Bid Decision: Your Most Important First Step

Before you get bogged down in detail, you need a solid process for qualifying opportunities. Too many businesses spot a tender and just jump in, dazzled by the contract value. This is a huge mistake. Chasing every opportunity spreads your team thin and results in rushed, low-quality submissions.

The public sector is a massive market, but it’s fiercely competitive. In the UK, the Ministry of Defence (MOD) alone awarded contracts worth £20.9 billion last year, according to data from GOV.UK. You have to be strategic with your time.

Why Saying 'No' Is a Superpower

A smart 'no' is often more valuable than a weak 'yes'. Every bid you decide not to pursue frees up your team's energy for the opportunities where you're a perfect fit. It’s about working smarter, not just harder.

The goal is simple: focus your effort where you have the highest probability of success. This requires an honest assessment of your capabilities against what the buyer is asking for.

This simple decision tree gets to the heart of it:

If a tender doesn't align with your core strengths, the best move is to walk away. Save your energy for the right fight.

Speeding Up the Decision

How do you make this choice quickly? You can’t spend days reading dense tender documents just to realise you don’t have the right accreditation. You need a system.

This is where Bidwell's tender monitoring makes a real difference. We deliver relevant opportunities straight to you. Each alert comes with an AI-generated summary, letting you grasp the key requirements in minutes, not hours. You instantly see the scope and deal-breakers, making that bid/no-bid call faster.

A fast, informed 'no-bid' is one of the most productive things a bid team can do. It protects your time.

To give yourself the green light, you need a firm 'yes' to these questions:

• Can we meet every mandatory requirement? Missing just one can get you disqualified. These are often in the Pre-Qualification Questionnaire (PQQ).
• Do we have strong, relevant experience? You’ll need hard evidence and case studies. Vague claims won't cut it.
• Is this contract profitable and strategically valuable? It has to make financial sense and fit with your long-term goals.
• Do we have the people and resources to deliver if we win? Don't bid on something you can't handle.

If the answer to any of these is a 'no', it’s probably time to pass. This disciplined approach is the foundation of a successful bidding strategy.

Your Quick Bid/No-Bid Checklist

Use a simple checklist for every opportunity. It formalises the process and removes emotion from the decision.

This check stops you from chasing opportunities that were never right for you in the first place. It frees you up to write great proposals for the ones that are.

Deconstructing the Tender and Building Your Plan

Right, you’ve made the ‘go’ decision. The next job is to turn that dense pack of tender documents into a clear plan. Don't let the volume of paperwork intimidate you. The key is to break it all down, piece by piece.

Your first task is to become an expert on what the buyer wants. This means reading everything – the specification, the terms, and the evaluation criteria. Missing a single instruction is one of the quickest ways to get disqualified.

Your Best Friend: The Compliance Matrix

A compliance matrix is essential. It’s a spreadsheet that lists every requirement from the tender documents. You’ll use it to track how and where your proposal meets each point. This isn't just a box-ticking exercise; it's a tool for ensuring your bid is 100% compliant.

A simple matrix should have a few key columns:

• Requirement ID: A reference number for the clause or question (e.g., Spec 4.2.1).
• Requirement Summary: A quick summary of what they're asking for.
• Compliant? (Y/N): A straightforward yes/no to track if you meet the need.
• Response Location: The section and page number in your proposal where you’ve answered this.
• Owner: The person on your team responsible for writing that section.

This document forces you to read every line and stops things from slipping through the cracks. It becomes the backbone of your entire response plan.

Follow the Marks: Understanding the Scoring

Next, find out how the buyer will score your proposal. This information is almost always in the tender pack. Look for the quality vs. price split – is it 60% quality / 40% price, or maybe 80/20? This tells you where to focus your energy.

If the bid is heavily weighted towards quality, you need to invest time in crafting detailed, evidence-backed answers. If price is the main event, your commercial strategy matters most. Ignoring this split is like flying blind.

A common mistake is writing a brilliant technical response for a tender that's decided almost entirely on the lowest price. Always let the evaluation criteria guide your focus.

Understanding the scoring also helps you allocate time. A question worth 20% of the marks needs your best subject matter expert. For a simple pass/fail administrative question, a quick, compliant answer is all that's needed.

Build a Realistic Timeline (and Stick to It)

With a clear view of all requirements, you can map out a realistic schedule. Work backwards from the submission deadline and block out time for each key stage. A typical bid timeline might look like this:

1. Kick-off Meeting (Day 1): Agree on the win strategy and assign clear roles.
2. First Drafts Due (Day 7): Team members submit their initial responses.
3. Review and Refine (Days 8-12): The bid manager edits for consistency and quality.
4. 'Red Team' Review (Day 13): A senior colleague reviews the bid with fresh eyes.
5. Final Polish (Day 14): Final proofreading and document formatting.
6. Submission (Day 15 - at least 24 hours before the deadline). Don't battle a crashing portal at the last minute.

This structured approach avoids the frantic, late-night rush that kills the quality of so many proposals.

Organise Your Evidence in a Knowledge Base

A huge part of planning involves gathering your proof points. You'll need case studies, team CVs, company policies, and accreditations. Hunting for these documents every time you bid is a waste of time.

This is where having a central knowledge base, like the one inside Bidwell, is a huge advantage. You can store all your core company information in one organised library. When you need a specific case study, it’s right there, ready to be tweaked for the new bid.

Think of it as your internal library of winning content. When this is organised, you stop starting from scratch every time. You're building from a solid foundation, which frees you up to focus on tailoring it perfectly.

Crafting Answers That Score High Marks

Right, this is where the real work begins. You’ve done the prep and you’ve got a solid plan. Now you need to write responses that convince the evaluator to give you the marks.

Let’s be blunt: generic, copy-pasted answers don’t win contracts.

Every answer you write must be a direct response to the buyer's problem. Think of yourself as a consultant diagnosing an issue. You have to prove you’ve listened, understood their pain points, and have a specific, credible fix.

Structuring Answers for Maximum Impact

A great answer isn't a wall of text. It needs a clear, logical structure that makes it easy for the evaluator to award you points.

A simple but effective framework for this is the P-E-A method:

• Point: Start with a direct statement that answers the question head-on. No waffle.
• Evidence: Back up your point with hard proof. This is where you bring in facts and real-world examples.
• Analyse: Explain why your evidence matters to them. This connects the dots and spells out the benefit for the buyer.

Let’s take a common question: "How will you ensure high-quality service delivery?" A weak answer just says, "We have a quality assurance process." It’s meaningless.

A strong answer using the P-E-A method looks completely different.

Point: We will ensure high-quality service delivery by assigning a dedicated contract manager who will conduct weekly performance reviews against the agreed KPIs.

Evidence: For a similar contract with Bristol City Council, this approach reduced service issue tickets by 35% within the first six months.

Analyse: This means you get a single, accountable point of contact and a proven method for fixing issues before they escalate. The result is consistently high service quality.

See the difference? This structure forces you to provide concrete proof. To see this in a full proposal, check out this example of bid writing.

The Power of Your Knowledge Base

Constantly writing these detailed, evidence-backed answers from scratch is a time sink. An organised company knowledge base is your secret weapon for writing better bids, faster.

Think of it as your company's single source of truth. It’s where you store policies, team CVs, accreditations, and your best case studies and previous bid answers.

When a question about your health and safety policy comes up, the approved version is right there. This organised library is the fuel for creating high-quality responses quickly. It ensures everyone on your team uses the same correct, compelling information every time.

Using AI to Draft and Refine

Once your knowledge base is populated, you can really get moving. This is where Bidwell's AI response generation makes a big difference. You feed it a tender question, and it accesses your own knowledge base to draft a tailored answer.

It pulls the relevant evidence and case studies to construct a response grounded in your proven capabilities. The AI does the heavy lifting of the initial draft.

What was once a 40-hour writing task can become just a few hours of reviewing and polishing.

This doesn't make your human experts redundant. It frees them up. Instead of writing basic descriptions, your specialists can focus on strategy and add the nuanced details that make a proposal stand out.

Tackling Social Value Questions

In UK public procurement, Social Value is no longer a 'nice-to-have'. It's a critical part of the evaluation, often worth 10% or more of the quality score. You have to show how your company will deliver wider benefits to the community, the economy, and the environment.

Vague promises about "being a good corporate citizen" will score you zero. You need specific, measurable commitments.

Here are some themes you’ll need to cover:

• Creating local employment: Will you hire apprentices from the area? Offer work placements?
• Supporting local supply chains: What percentage of your contract spend will go to other local SMEs? Be specific.
• Environmental sustainability: What concrete steps will you take to cut carbon emissions or reduce waste?

Again, your knowledge base is crucial here. It’s where you store your social value policies, community project case studies, and environmental performance data. Our AI response generation can then use this information to draft compelling, evidence-based answers.

Building a Compliant and Competitive Price Model

Your pricing schedule isn't just a list of numbers. It’s a make-or-break part of your proposal that must be both competitive and perfectly compliant. One tiny mistake here can get your entire bid thrown out.

Getting this right means showing you offer true value for money, not just the lowest figure. It's about building a price model that makes sense and aligns with the solution you’ve described.

Aligning Price with Your Technical Solution

The two halves of your bid – the technical solution and the price – must tell the same story. If you've proposed a premium service, your price needs to reflect that. A suspiciously low price will raise immediate red flags.

A high price with no clear justification will just be seen as poor value. Government departments are tasked with finding 'technical efficiencies'. They're looking for bidders who can deliver the required outcome smartly and cost-effectively.

Choosing Your Pricing Strategy

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to pricing. The right strategy depends on the contract and how it will be evaluated.

You'll come across a few common models:

• Fixed Price: You agree on one total price for the project. This is common for well-defined work.
• Time and Materials: You charge an agreed hourly or daily rate plus material costs. This fits projects where the scope is flexible.
• Cost-Plus: You charge for all project costs plus an agreed-upon percentage or fixed fee for your profit.

Whatever you choose, you have to be able to justify it. If you opt for a fixed price, be sure you've costed every element accurately.

Justifying Your Costs and Proving Value

Never just submit a list of prices without explanation. Your pricing document should be clear and easy for a non-financial evaluator to understand. Break your costs down logically and link them directly back to the specification.

For example, don't just list "Project Manager - £X". Explain it: "Project Manager (10 hours per week) - £X. This covers weekly progress meetings and reporting as required in section 4.2." This detail shows your price is based on the actual work required.

Think about how compliance can give you an edge. Strong environmental credentials might justify a slightly higher price if they help the buyer meet their own sustainability targets. You can find out more about Turning Compliance Into Competitive Advantage.

The winning price is rarely the absolute lowest price. It’s the Most Economically Advantageous Tender (MEAT) – the price that offers the best overall value when balanced against quality.

Freeing Up Your Experts for Strategic Pricing

Crafting a winning price model is a highly skilled job. This is where your most experienced team members should focus their time. The demand for skilled bid professionals is high, with average UK salaries for Bid Writers reaching £74,915.

Using Bidwell's AI response generation to handle the quality sections frees up your senior people. While the AI drafts compliant, evidence-based answers from your knowledge base, your commercial experts can dedicate their attention to developing a winning price strategy.

The Final Review, Edit and Submit with Confidence

You’ve wrestled with the tender questions and built your pricing. The temptation to hit ‘submit’ is immense, but this is where winning bids are made. Rushing this last hurdle is a classic mistake.

A proposal riddled with typos sends a clear message: you lack attention to detail. If you can't get your own proposal right, will you get their project right? It's a direct reflection of your professionalism.

A Fresh Pair of Eyes is Your Best Defence

You can’t review your own work effectively. You're too close to it. You’ll read what you meant to write, not what's on the page. A structured review is the only way to catch weaknesses before the evaluator does.

A solid process should include a few different angles:

• The Peer Review: Grab a colleague from the bid team. They can quickly spot if an argument is weak or if you've contradicted yourself.
• The Technical Sanity-Check: Get your subject matter experts to give their sections a final once-over. Is everything technically accurate?
• The 'Red Team' Review: Find a senior colleague who has had zero involvement in the bid. Ask them to read it cold, just like an evaluator would. They bring fresh eyes and will instantly flag anything that’s confusing or unconvincing.

This might feel like it’s slowing you down, but it's one of the highest-value activities in the entire bid process.

Your Final Proofreading Checklist

Once the content is solid, it's time for the final check. Comb through the document line by line.

• Spelling and Grammar: Obvious, but critical. Are you using correct UK English (e.g., ‘organise’, not ‘organize’)?
• Consistency: Is your company name spelled the same way throughout? Are you using consistent terms?
• Formatting: Does your document meet every single formatting rule? Think font, margins, page limits, and file type.
• File Naming: Have you named your files exactly as instructed? A simple slip-up here can get your bid rejected.

I’ve seen bids deemed non-compliant for a single formatting error. Don't let weeks of hard work be undone by something so easily avoidable.

Conquering the Submission Portal

Alright, it’s time. But don't leave submission until the last hour. Procurement portals are notoriously clunky and can crash under the strain of last-minute deadlines.

Aim to get everything uploaded at least 24 hours before the cut-off.

Give yourself plenty of time to get familiar with the portal. Find the right upload slots for technical and commercial documents. Upload your files, double-check you’ve attached the right versions, and then click submit.

The final, crucial step: get that submission receipt. Screenshot it, save the confirmation number, and email it to your team. This is your proof that you submitted on time.

What Happens After You Click Submit

Hitting 'submit' feels like the finish line, but it’s the start of the next phase. Your job now switches from writing to managing the process.

The first thing that happens is a compliance check. Someone in the procurement team will quickly check that you’ve submitted everything they asked for, in the right format.

During this period, you might get a clarification question. This isn't a bad sign. It's usually a simple request to clear up a minor point. Answer it quickly, professionally, and stick to the point.

The Waiting Game: Standstill Period

Once the buyer has picked a winner, they’ll send out award notices. This kicks off the standstill period.

In UK public procurement, this is a legal requirement – a 10-day cooling-off period before the contract is officially signed. It gives bidders a chance to see the outcome and ask questions.

Whether you've won or lost, this period is critical. Don't sign contracts or make firm commitments until the standstill period is over and you have the final, signed contract.

How to Handle a Win (and a Loss)

If you get the good news, brilliant. Celebrate, then get back to it. Formally thank the buyer and confirm you accept the award. Then, your focus needs to shift immediately to mobilisation, getting everything lined up to deliver on day one.

If you lose, it stings. But every loss is a chance to get smarter. As UK public spending is set to rise, departments are under immense pressure to find £14bn in yearly efficiencies. Understanding why you lost is key. You can learn more about what this means for bid teams.

The single most important thing to do after a loss is to ask for feedback.

Politely request your scores and, if possible, the winning bidder's scores. This is gold dust. The feedback will show you exactly where you fell short. Was it your methodology, your pricing, or your evidence?

Take every piece of feedback and feed it straight back into your Bidwell knowledge base. This is how you create a cycle of continuous improvement. The lessons from one bid directly strengthen the next one you write.

Common Bid Proposal Questions Answered

When you're new to bidding, the same questions tend to pop up. Here are some quick, straight-talking answers.

How Long Should a Bid Proposal Be?

There’s no magic number. The real answer is: as long as the buyer tells you it should be.

Some tenders have strict page limits or even character counts. Others are more open. The golden rule is to be concise. Answer the question fully and back it up with evidence, but resist adding waffle.

An evaluator wading through dozens of submissions will not be impressed by volume. Always check the tender documents for specific limits and stick to them.

What's the Most Common Mistake You See?

The single biggest mistake we see is failing to answer the actual question being asked. It sounds obvious, but it happens all the time.

Companies get excited and write what they want to tell the buyer. They fall back on generic marketing copy that doesn’t directly address the specific evaluation criteria.

This is a fast track to a low score. You have to tailor every answer to the buyer's question, using their language and focusing on their stated priorities.

Reusing content is smart, but copying and pasting without careful editing is a fatal error. Each response must feel like it was written for that one tender.

Can I Reuse Old Proposal Content?

Yes, and you absolutely should. Reusing content is key to bidding efficiently without burning out your team.

This is why having an organised knowledge base is so important. It’s a central home for your best answers, your go-to case studies, and all your company policies.

You can and should pull from this core material. But the crucial step is to always review and tailor it for the new bid. Never just copy and paste an old answer. For a deeper look, we have a guide on handling questions in a request for proposal.

Writing winning bids takes practice and a lot of time. Bidwell makes the whole process faster. Our AI response generation creates high-quality, evidence-based drafts from your own knowledge base, turning a 40-hour writing task into a few hours of review. Our tender monitoring also finds you the best opportunities. Find out more at https://bidwell.app.