Nature of tender review meetings

Tender review meetings form a significant part of a contractor's tendering process. These are instances in a tender process when the members of a bid team come together to coordinate their tender preparation activities, develop their tender strategy, and quality check the output to date of a tender process. Little empirical work exists on this, particularly because of the commercially sensitive data associated with it. Here, access was negotiated into the offices of two major UK contractors, hereafter known as Gamma and Delta, and the whole tender process was shadowed for 6 and 7 weeks, respectively, using participant observation, documentary analysis, and interview. This helped to examine and analyze the various review meetings that take place in the tendering process, and how they connect with the development of a contractor's tender strategy, program, and price. Out of seven tender review meetings identified, four main ones significantly impacted the final submission. These were tender launch, midtender review, tender clarification with client, and finalization review. The review meetings consumed 6-9% of the tender period - 108 working hours in Gamma and 180 in Delta. Although this may have contributed significantly to tendering costs, review meetings provided an essential means for joint risk management and integration of the various parts of a contractor's bid team. The findings are particularly useful for contractors because they offer a systematic examination of what actually happens in practice and the implications for tendering costs and bid formulation.