Episode 21 – Mark Cronin
Construction Business Strategy
What strategies can I adopt to improve my construction business?
Mark Cronin is an associate Director of Townmore Construction. Mark has impressive experience both in Ireland and internationally in the areas of Tendering, Procurement, Business Development, Marketing, Cleanrooms & Strategy. Mark talks to Ciaran about what strategies he is using to deal with the inevitable changes we face and gives away some great tips on what companies can do to win more tenders.
Podcast Highlights
Top 3 tips to a successful tender
Ciaran:
You’re obviously saying, 12, 13 years of experience, they’re putting these bits together. If you were to summarise three of them points you touched now there… three top tips, let’s say, for a successful bid, what would they be?
Mark:
I suppose, look, there’s a few things. If I were to look at it from start to finish, being in receipt of your bid, I suppose, the first thing, the first top tip is review it at the earliest opportunity. I think we all have a habit of… Look, there are still times where you kind of, particularly if you’re busy, you may receive a tender in, and you’ve got five or six weeks to return it, and it kind of gets put over there, because, “Look, I have this much on my desk and I need to get out this before I even look at it.” That’s probably the worst thing you can do, because if you do that, you’re just going immediately on the back foot. You put yourself under pressure. I would say, reviewing this straightaway from the front end. I usually do a kind of a tender launch summary whereby I review the requirements.
A second top tip is delegate early. Typically, for a bid, you’ll have from an estimator, or perhaps project manager or planner, et cetera, delegate what their requirements are and give them deadlines at the earliest opportunity, because that way you’re giving them time. Then, the third thing, I suppose, a top tip, which a lot of people don’t do, and I think it’s… we’re all a little prone to is reviewing your submission. It would be easy if you have 10 different elements just to grab them from the various stakeholders, buying it together and put it through, but actually reading through it thereafter and making sure that it’s correct, it’s accurate, right? You shouldn’t just presume that all of the stakeholders are going to write it in the correct manner, answer the question, whatever.
You have to go through with, and you have to go through in detail, and you have to be articulate and review it as if you’re mark it yourself. That way you’re challenging yourself throughout, There are probably three key elements. Other than that, presentation is critical as well. If you present a really nicely put together a bid, nicely bound, it sets the impression straight away with the reader.
