The Challenge

The Growth Company is a not-for-profit, commercially driven organisation dedicated to economic development, inward investment, skills, employment and enterprise. Established in Manchester in 1989, they have been the driving force behind growth in England’s second city for nearly three decades.

Growth Company deliver a wide range of Government-funded employability and skills programmes and wanted some support to help win a key new programme with the National Citizens Service. This large, £88million contract was issued to run for 3 years, with a 2-year extension option. Its goal is to provide personal and social development programmes for upwards of 16,000 young people.

£88m new contract win

League table topping contract performance

The Response

4OC and 50 Degrees worked together to provide the Growth Company business development and operational teams with:

  • Bid Management
  • Solution Design
  • Bid Writing
  • Mobilisation Planning and support
  • Contract Implementation Support

The Outcome

The Growth Company tender was successful – winning a new contract valued at over £88m.

The 4OC team then worked alongside Growth Company staff in Manchester over the course of three months leading up to their go-live date, to support actions including implementation planning, TUPE negotiations, staff induction and training, as well as coordinating the completion of readiness activities set out by the Trust.

The Growth Company contract got off to a great start, enjoying league table topping performance. A number of the 4OC mobilisation tools used by Growth Company were shared by the Commissioner with other suppliers as examples of best practice.

Michelle Leeson, Managing Director of The Growth Company recently provided us with some really positive feedback:

“I’ve had the pleasure of working with both 50 Degrees and 4OC on a number of public service programmes. The National Citizen Service is a great example, where 50 Degrees supported our Business Development team to secure the management contract for the North West, and 4OC worked with us to successfully implement and embed the programme. They’re a great team to work with, and I believe their new partnership will be of great benefit to their clients.” 

The Challenge

JBW is a long-term partner to many local and central government clients, efficiently reducing government debt at no cost to the public purse.

JBW wanted to pursue a major new opportunity with Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service to deliver enforcement service contracts, and brought in existing partner 4OC to support the bid and mobilisation planning effort.

£100m+ new contract won with HMCTS
  • Every mobilisation milestone met to date

The Response

JBW commissioned 4OC to support them in their response to this large opportunity based on having successfully worked together previously on a range of smaller-scale bids. The 4OC team worked closely with the JBW management and business development teams to formulate a world-class tender response. This was a new service for JBW, which involved an extremely complex tender response.

In addition to bid and commercial support, the 4OC team provided in-depth mobilisation planning for the bid response.

The Outcome

JBW were successful with the tender, securing over £100m of new enforcement service contracts on behalf of Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service.

4OC are currently programme managing the ongoing mobilisation of 4 major contracts across multiple regions. The core 4OC team has been made up of Programme Manager, Project Manager, Project Support and Account Director, with additional IT Specialist roles provided.

This large-scale programme has successfully endured the impact of Covid-19, with our team managing complex risks and operational complications. Positive relationships have been built with the commissioning authority and all key milestones have been delivered on time.

The challenge

The requirement to respond to tenders for the provision of new services or the continuation of existing services is a fact of life for most NHS Trusts and other healthcare providers.

4OC has an experienced bid support team, who bring together NHS and commercial bid writing experience, including writing successful bids for private health care providers. We provide a range of services, from managing the whole tender response process to providing a half day coaching session to help you to prepare for a ‘pitching’ meeting with commissioners.

Our team understands that the clinicians and managers who have the knowledge needed to complete a successful bid have very busy ‘day job’.  We work hard to ensure that we draw on the knowledge and experience of these teams, but also provide a broad perspective from our collective decades of bid writing experience.

£300m in tenders won to date

100% bid win strike rate

The response

Over the past year we have supported two large NHS Foundation Trusts to develop tender responses for acute and community healthcare services to a combined annual value of approximately £300M. 

We have delivered the following:

  • Provided support for five bids, ranging from a major NHSE procurement of Specialist Services to a CCG procurement of community healthcare services across one locality
  • Analysed the tender response requirements, and identified ‘win messages’ for the bid
  • Developed a ‘tracker’ for each bid, showing the questions, word count and scoring mechanism.  We then use this to track who is working on each question, to ensure that we have good version control
  • Drafted bid responses and reviewed Trust responses
  • Provided coaching and preparation sessions for bidder’s interviews and pitching sessions, including the development of bidder’s presentations

The outcome

We are happy to say that all the Trusts we have worked with have secured 100% of the contracts for which we have been engaged. They have gone on to comment that our support helps to make bidding feel like a well- managed and well supported process.