With several very nervous clients still awaiting their contract documentation overnight, I did think about writing a post of advice on the conduct of these bid rounds. We have helped with so very many now that we are in a pretty strong position to summarise the experience from the bidders point of view. On reflection however I am, 1) too busy and 2) see the headline. The offer is genuine and remains forever open if anyone at the LAA want’s to take it up.
I will however raise just one issue – communication. On all levels it is frankly abysmal and, when ones recent, daily diet of phone calls involves repeated questions on how to simply enter into this, the frustration is greatly magnified. Whilst “they haven’t even opened our message on the portal with the heading ‘contract query’ yet and the deadline is today” may well be down to sheer weight of traffic, at least get a quick receipt note back to the clearly worried firm to that effect. Surely that is easily achievable – I can do it on Gmail for heaven’s sake.
More regular updates on progress, at least to let suppliers know they are “not alone” would also greatly help – it is pretty much all I am doing at present and on the basis of far less data. Again, this would be so simple to accomplish it is hard to find any good reason not to do so.
