Lasotell Tender and Specification Preparation Services

Tender and Specification Preparation includes:

• Tender documents such as Expression of Interest, Request for Proposal and Request for Tender together with ancillary documents such as Statement of Work and Service Level Specification.
• Software and Hardware Specification documents (including documents to Military Specification standard).

For tender/specification documents to be successful, the people preparing them need to mark, learn and inwardly digest the following principles:

• A requirement sentence states what you want.  A Statement of Work sentence states what you want done.
• Each requirement should be uniquely identified to make response assessment and follow-up discussion much easier.
• Each requirement often needs one or two scope sentences that define the bounds of the requirement.
• Each requirement needs a separate Test Specification sentence stating what you will do to verify the requirement has been delivered (yes, this applies to tender and specification documents).
• The Test Specification provides the sanity check for the requirement — if you cannot test it, the requirement is wrong (one way or another).
• Unless there is a very good reason, neither a tender nor specification document should impose any restriction or constraint on those who have to develop the deliverable solution. (This helps produce the most cost-effective outcome.)

With these principles in mind, preparing the document content is easier. And they help with the task of preparing the document itself – there is less rewriting after each review.

Measurable Benefits of Proper Tender and Specification Preparation

If you can apply these principles correctly, (and it takes a little time and practice to learn to do so consistently), you will write documents that are easy to understand. This means you will receive better solutions and better prices.

The clarity of the document, combined with the unique requirement identifier, results in easier to evaluate response documents and easier to check deliverables. This makes the process more efficient, and quicker because there is less time spent on dealing with ambiguities, which translates into significant cost savings.

Lasotell Tender and Specification Preparation Skills

• Contribute to the requirements identification/definition phase
• Assist or be the original author for draft specifications and other elements
• Manage the writing phase of the document
• "Gotcha" checks (that is, preventing unscoped requirements creeping into the document)
• Consistency checks
• Quality aspects
• Project Management or Project Co-ordination
• Configuration Management
• Research topics and gather data
• General gopher
• Final document publishing.