– By Caroline Falls –
There are a lot of businesses that are on constant watch for tender opportunities. So there’s a ready audience that can easily get excited about the potential to grow by providing you with their goods and services. In short, your tender document is going to get a lot of attention.
The thing is, you need to ensure you have everything covered by the tender document that goes into circulation, and that the processes you are going to use for the evaluation of the bids is transparent.
“An industry-based approach to tender documentation, and assessment with transparent processes, will provide a higher level of confidence for suppliers to respond,” according to Institute of Public Works Engineering Australasia’s Plant and Vehicle Management Manual . “This will, in turn, ultimately provide better value to purchasers through closer and more consistent offers for assessment.”
You also need to be mindful that your requests – such as a wide call for on-site demonstrations – can add to the eventual price you will pay. In this example, it may be more prudent to establish a short-list through a pre-tender evaluation.
The IPWEA manual has a chapter devoted to how to go about preparing the tender documentation and establishing evaluation processes.
In a five-step guide for best management practice in tendering for vehicles and equipment, the manual says, in summary:
- Utilisation review: confirm with operators the vehicle/asset’s requirements
- Review the specification: ensure technology requirements are up-to-date
- Tender requirements: ensure transparency to all tenderers, and explain compliance and evaluation criteria and weightings
- Tender evaluation: review all tenders for compliance and assess them for whole-of-life costs
- Disposing of fleet/assets: Research market prices for used assets, detail and refurbish if necessary, and, where possible, sell through a public auction using highest trade-in price as a reserve.
The chapter on tender writing goes into detail about: how to evaluate fairly using the net present value, or NPV, method; how to scale weightings, and, how and why a whole evaluation team approach is necessary to be fair both to the tenderers and to your own organisation’s operators. It also includes as an appendix an example of a tender assessment and report.
The IPWEA manual is a how-to guide to setting up a fleet and asset management program. It covers topics such as rightsizing the fleet, minimising unscheduled repairs, returning the best value on a capital investment, deciding whether to buy or hire equipment, buying and disposing of equipment and embedding key performance indicators.
Fleet Auto News is running a series of articles based on the 280-page manual. This article is based on the third edition of Plant and Vehicle Management Manual, Institute of Public Works Engineering Australasia. For more information about the manual click here or telephone 1300 416 745.
