Tenders for Housing Contracts

Where to start?

There are many different tender opportunities related to housing as it covers a vast range of products and services. Housing related work is regularly outsourced by Local Authorities and Housing Associations, as well as private sector housing enterprises. Right from the start, one of the most difficult tasks is to sift through the large number of housing tenders and recognise not only the tender you want, but also that you have the capability to successfully bid for.

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Some of the products and services you may find in the Housing tender category are:

Consequently, you may have to read through many housing tender specifications to find one that is relevant to your business and appropriate to the level of experience you have. Some products and services can be grouped together into a single lot or divided up into multiple lots. Ensuring you have an efficient system to sort through the tender information and decide properly on whether to bid or not will help achieve a much better return on your tendering investment.

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Tender top tips

Top tips for winning contracts in the housing sector

1. Check how the tender is structured

Check how the tender is structured. Is it split into different lots or are all services grouped together? If the latter, be sure you can deliver all of the requirements. This is a good opportunity to demonstrate to the buyer how you will achieve excellent volume efficiencies. If they award the whole contract to you, how much will they save? Can you offer some added value incentives? Correspondingly, if you’re bidding for an individual lot, how will your business deliver better value than a bigger multi-disciplinary company?

2. Read all the tender documentation

There may be a lot of documentation, but you need to understand exactly what the buyer is looking for and whether you are able to meet all their requirements. If you don’t have some of the accreditations, e.g. CHAS, Constructionline, CQC, is this something you should be looking to invest in so you can tender for future similar opportunities? Check carefully whether having the accreditation is an absolute pass/fail, or whether there is opportunity to explain an alternative. Certain accreditations are not always required and can be expensive to attain.

3. Quality assurance

Councils, housing associations and other housing authorities are risk-averse, so you need to provide the assurances that your service is robust and high quality. How do you monitor your service delivery so that it is of a consistent high quality? What systems do you have in place for dealing with any problems or complaints? How have you acted on feedback to improve the quality of your service? Can you include examples of customer feedback within your tender response?

4. Provide evidence

The housing authority will want to be certain that you have the skills and experience necessary to provide the service requested. To provide the assurance the buyer needs, use case histories and testimonials, ensuring you include information on mobilisation, resourcing, timescales, communication, and results/outcomes. Wherever possible, include facts and figures from where you have successfully delivered similar services to other customers in the past.

5. Value for money

Housing authority budgets are tight, so they will want to ensure they are getting value for money. Can you demonstrate how you can help reduce costs or increase efficiencies without affecting the level of service? Again, show the real figures from your previous experiences. How did you save your last 3 customers money over the course of their contracts? As a smaller business, you will also need to differentiate yourself from a bigger bidder that expects to achieve volume efficiencies (e.g. bigger company can buy in bulk). What evidence do you have to counteract that argument? Can you show that actually, on balance, your smaller business delivers much better long-term value?

6. Social value

Improving the economic, social and environmental well-being of the local community is of high importance to housing authorities and councils so your tender response will need to demonstrate the benefits your business will provide in these areas. Take into consideration the value of the tender but think about what you can offer in terms of local employment, apprenticeships, volunteering, local business support, and environmental and sustainability considerations. What can you offer as a local SME that a large corporate can’t? This can be a key differentiator and is often worth 10% of a tender score.

7. Continuous improvement and innovation

Again, within the constraints of a tight budget, housing authorities are looking for suppliers to deliver over and above the specified services so they can deliver a better service for their own customers, users, residents, patients etc. Most housing tenders will therefore include questions for suppliers to demonstrate what they can do to enhance the contract, what innovative methods they can bring to the table, and what improvements they will deliver over the contract term. It’s important to show evidence of how your innovative methods have been used to save your other customers money or delivered better quality. If you don’t have this data, collect this now.