When BIT decided to grow in the Public Sector, it was decided to establish a dedicated public tender team.  The director of the Professional Service Business Unit of BIT is part of this team.  He convinced the team to adopt the  Prince 2 methodology for answering tenders that have an annual, expected, turnover higher than 1 million euro for year.
That’s how BIT tailored Prince 2 starting up  Project process.

The director of the Professional Service Business Unit of BIT was nominated as Quality Assurance (in BIT this role is called BPO) for all Projects related to the Public Sectors that a potential turnover higher than 1 million euro for year.
In general, there is about 30 working days available for any Company to answer a Public tender since the date of publication. So, time tolerance is not allowed in this kind of project. For this reason, His first action was to tailor the starting up Process processes in order to require a minimum time in the execution of this phase.

1) Organization.
The PMO of the service business unit has the role of Quality Assurance.  His first task was to Introduce the Prince2 methodology to the bid managers;
then he agreed with BIT management how to tailor Prince2 for the specific environment of public tenders of BIT,  starting from the starting up Project  processes.

The Corporate Management and their tolerance for this phase.
The Corporate Management is composed by the sales director.
They delegated the  Account Manager  and/or the bid manager to start a project.
They stated that in any case a tenders with unlimited responsibility of the tenderee cannot be started.
In this phase of the project it is never allowed to have a cost for external consultant higher than 5% of the declared value of the tender.
Finally,  the account manager and/or the project manager shall present the project brief within 4 working days of the announcement of the tender; escalation to the Escalation to Quality Assurance  is possible (for example when the time allowed to present the bid is longer than 30 working days).

Project Board
In order to save time in the starting up Project Phase, the Assurance manager has also define a permanent structure for this phase of the project:
– The Executive role is always covered by the Sales Director.
– The Senior User role is always covered by the Account Manager of public sector.
– The Senior Supply role is always covered by the Director of Operations

2) The Project Brief.
Always to save time in this phase, the Assurance manager has tailored the content of the project brief.  In a Power Point presentation:

– Project Definition:  Title of the tender and scope as defined in the tender itself.

– The Project Approach (defined by the Assurance manager for all tenders): as illustrated in this and future posts.

– The Outline business cases must report the financial figures of the tender. In particular:
* Scope of the tender
* Declared volume (amount and/or Unit);
* Countries involved for delivery
* Selection Criteria
* Financial Evaluation Criteria

–  Project management team structure: defined by the Assurance Manager.

– Role Description: defined by the Assurance Manager.

– Project Product Description: as described in the tender.

– Reference:
* lesson learn from previous, similar, contract;
* Eventual preparation work done for the tender;
* eventual existence of back to back contracts for suppliers made in preparation for the tender.

This is the Project Brief prepared for the one winner, one catalogue tender previously analysed.

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To know more:
Tailoring Prince 2 to answer a public tender: initiating a Project.