Frequently Asked Questions

Below we have gathered the questions we hear most often from businesses in Bristol who are preparing bids for public and private contracts. If you cannot find an answer here, our contact page has direct details to reach us, and our services page lists what we cover.

Getting started with tender support

Before diving into the questions, it helps to know the shape of our work. We have handled 920 completed jobs since 2013, working with 702 clients across two districts of Bristol and the surrounding area. A team of six people manages requests, and a typical reply to a new enquiry arrives within one hour during business hours.

Tender support covers the practical work needed to submit a competitive bid: reading through the invitation to tender, checking eligibility criteria, drafting method statements, pulling together financial and technical evidence, and formatting the final submission so it meets the buyer's requirements. We also review pricing schedules and help you check that nothing in the pack has been missed. The aim is to reduce the administrative load on your team so you can focus on delivering the work itself, rather than chasing paperwork deadlines.

Both are possible, depending on what a client needs. Some businesses send us a draft and ask for a structural and compliance check. Others want us to draft sections from scratch, based on interviews with their operational staff about how a project would actually be delivered. Either way, the content reflects your own methods and experience; we do not invent qualifications or claim capabilities you do not have. Over 920 completed jobs, roughly a quarter have been full drafting projects and the rest reviews or partial support.

We reply to new enquiries within about an hour during business hours, Monday to Friday, 09:00 to 18:00. Once we understand the deadline and the scope of the tender, we can usually confirm within the same day whether we have capacity and give you a working timeline. Short-notice requests, with a week or less before submission, are still accepted where possible, but the earlier we are brought in the more thorough the review can be.

Our client base spans construction and trades, facilities services, IT and digital suppliers, and small consultancies bidding for local authority or NHS framework contracts. We do not specialise in one industry exclusively; the underlying tender process (compliance, method statements, pricing) is similar across sectors, though the technical detail differs. If a request falls outside what our team can reasonably support, we say so upfront rather than take on work we cannot do well.

Documents, evidence and scoring

A large part of tender writing is less about prose and more about matching evidence to the exact wording of the question. The following questions come up whenever a client is preparing supporting documents for the first time.

Typically: insurance certificates, health and safety policy, recent accounts or financial statements, staff qualifications relevant to the contract, examples of past project delivery, and any existing method statements. If some of these are missing or out of date, we flag it early so there is time to update them before the deadline rather than discovering a gap on submission day.

We start by breaking the question into its component parts, since many tender questions ask for three or four things in one paragraph. Missing one part is a common reason for lost marks. We then match each part to concrete evidence from your business: a specific project, a named process, a measurable outcome. Generic statements without evidence tend to score poorly, so wherever possible we replace them with a real example and a short explanation of what happened and why it worked.

We can review the structure of a pricing schedule and check it against the tender's format requirements, flag inconsistencies between the price and the method statement, and confirm that all line items requested by the buyer are present. We do not set your prices for you, since that depends on your own costs and margins, but we make sure the numbers are presented clearly and match what you have written elsewhere in the bid.

Yes. We help select which past projects best illustrate the requirement being asked about, then write them up in a consistent format: scope, your role, challenges, outcome. If reference contacts are required, we advise on how to approach former clients for permission and make sure the request goes out with enough notice before the deadline, since references are often the part most delayed by waiting on a third party.

This happens more often than people expect. Our first step is always a full read-through to identify inconsistencies between the instructions, the specification and the question set. Where something is genuinely ambiguous, we draft a clarification question to submit through the buyer's official channel rather than guessing. Submitting clarification questions is a normal, accepted part of the process and shows the buyer that the bid is being prepared carefully.

Working relationship and cost

Since 2013 we have worked with 702 clients; 166 of them returned for a second tender. That repeat rate reflects how we structure ongoing support rather than one-off jobs alone.

Cost depends on the size of the tender pack, the number of questions, and how much of the drafting we take on versus reviewing existing content. A short compliance review costs less than a full write-up of a 40-page technical submission. We give a fixed quote once we have seen the tender documents, so there are no surprise charges partway through. Full figures are listed on our services page.

Some clients prefer a rolling arrangement, particularly if they bid several times a year on similar frameworks. Under this setup we keep a library of your existing evidence, policies and case studies updated, so each new bid starts from a stronger position rather than from scratch. This tends to suit businesses bidding at least three or four times annually; for occasional bidders, a per-project arrangement is usually more practical.

The content belongs to you. Anything we draft is based on information you provide about your operations, and it is yours to reuse in future tenders or amend as your business changes. We do not retain rights over the wording, though we do keep a copy on file so that repeat clients do not need to resupply the same background information for every new bid.

You know your business better than we do, so some input is always needed, particularly for technical detail and specific project examples. In practice this usually means one or two short calls plus written answers to a set of targeted questions we send through. We keep this as light as possible; most clients spend a few hours total on a mid-sized tender, with the bulk of the drafting and formatting handled on our side.

Sometimes, depending on our current workload and the size of the tender. Short-notice work is more limited in scope; we usually focus on compliance checks, formatting, and tightening existing draft answers rather than starting from a blank page. If you contact us as soon as you know the deadline is tight, we can tell you honestly within the hour whether it is feasible.

Our core coverage is Bristol and the two neighbouring districts we regularly serve, since local knowledge of buyers and frameworks helps with accuracy. Most of our work is done remotely by phone, email and video call, so location outside these areas is not always a barrier. It is best to ask directly through our contact page so we can confirm whether we have capacity for your particular tender.

After submission

Support does not always end once the bid has gone in. These last questions cover what happens after submission and how we handle feedback from buyers.

Buyers sometimes send clarification requests after the deadline, particularly for larger contracts. We help draft the response in the same tone and format as the original bid, keeping it consistent with what was already submitted. Turnaround for these is usually fast, since the underlying evidence has already been gathered during the main tender process.

Yes. Most public sector buyers provide a scoring breakdown or written feedback on request. We go through it question by question, compare it against what was submitted, and identify where evidence was thin or a requirement was missed. This becomes a working note for the next tender rather than a one-off exercise, so the same gap does not appear twice.

Send us the tender documents, or even just the deadline and a short description if the pack is not yet released, through our contact page. We will reply within about an hour during business hours with an initial view on scope and next steps. You can also read more about our background on the about page or see the full list of what we offer on services.

Still have a question about your tender?

Get in touch and we will reply within the hour during business hours.

Contact Japade