Bids are scored on your people before anyone opens your price
In a functionality or technical evaluation, your key personnel are points. A panel works through qualifications, professional registration, years of relevant experience and comparable project work against a published rubric, and a submission that falls short of the threshold is set aside before the price envelope is considered. We write and standardise the personnel documentation that carries those points.
For the people who own the submission
Bid managers and business development leads carry a deadline that does not move and a document set that is never quite ready. The technical response gets the attention. The personnel section, which is scored, gets whatever time is left.
Bid and proposal managers
Running a submission with a fixed closing date, chasing CVs from people who are billing on site and formatting them at midnight. This is the part of the bid that can be prepared properly in advance.
Consulting, engineering and ICT firms
Firms whose credibility rests on named experts, bidding into public sector, donor-funded and private frameworks where personnel documentation is evaluated rather than skimmed.
Joint ventures and consortium leads
Partners bringing CVs from three organisations in three formats into one submission that has to read as though it came from one firm.
The personnel section is a marked paper
Most CVs written for a bid are written as though a client will read them. An evaluator is not a client. They are working through a scoresheet, under time pressure, looking for specific evidence in a specific place, and awarding or withholding points accordingly.
The rubric is published, and most bidders skim it
The evaluation criteria sit in the bid document: what is scored, what each element is worth, and the minimum required to proceed. A personnel CV should be written against that table, criterion by criterion, not against a general idea of what a good CV looks like.
Points are lost on verification, not on talent
Professional registration numbers missing or expired. Dates that do not reconcile across a team. A qualification stated without the awarding institution. Project experience described in language that never touches the scope of work. Each of these is a scored line an evaluator cannot award.
Threshold before price
Under the Preferential Procurement Policy Framework Act, functionality is commonly evaluated first, with a minimum threshold, and only qualifying bids proceed to price and preference points. A strong price behind a weak personnel section is never opened.
Consistency reads as capability
Five CVs in five layouts, with five ways of describing the same project the firm delivered together, tells an evaluator something about the organisation submitting them. One standard, applied across the team, is the cheapest credibility available in a bid.
Five document types, one standard
Key personnel CVs
Written to the format the bid document prescribes, whether that is a client template, a donor form or a free format, and structured so an evaluator finds each scored element where they expect it. Qualifications, registrations, years of relevant experience and comparable projects, each stated so it can be verified.
Consultant and specialist profiles
Shorter credential pieces for named experts, associates and subcontracted specialists, written to sit alongside the personnel CVs without repeating them and without contradicting them.
Project experience profiles
Your track record written as evidence rather than as a list: scope, role, value band, duration, outcome and the specific relevance to the work being tendered for, mapped to the terms of reference.
Standardisation and capability documentation
One template, one style and one set of conventions applied across the whole bid team, plus the company capability statement or corporate profile where the submission calls for it. You keep the master set and reuse it on the next bid.
From bid document to submission-ready set
Send the brief
Share the bid document or terms of reference, the personnel list and whatever CVs exist. A consultant reads the evaluation criteria before quoting.
Scope and quote
You receive a scope, a fixed quote and a delivery schedule built backwards from your closing date. Nothing begins until you approve it.
Intake and writing
A short structured intake per person, so your experts spend minutes rather than evenings. Writing follows, to the prescribed format and against the scored criteria.
Delivery and reuse
Editable Word and PDF, plus the master set in your house template. The next submission starts from a library rather than from an inbox.
Start with a pre-submission audit
If a bid is close to closing and the personnel section already exists, the fastest engagement is an audit rather than a rewrite. A consultant reads your CVs against the published evaluation criteria and returns a marked list of where points are at risk and what to fix first. Firms usually run this once, then bring the next submission to us earlier.
Tell us the brief, and we will scope it
Send the bid document, the personnel list and your closing date. A consultant reads the evaluation criteria and returns a scope, a fixed quote and a schedule that works backwards from the deadline.
Short-notice submissions
A closing date this week is not automatically a problem, but it does change the scope. Say so in the brief and a consultant will tell you plainly what is achievable in the time and what is not, before you commit to anything.
Before you enquire
Can you write to the format prescribed in the bid document?
We close this week. Can you still help?
Do you write the technical proposal itself?
What about donor and multilateral formats?
Some of our key personnel sit at partner firms. Does that complicate it?
Will you sign an NDA?
How is this quoted?
Bidding often, not just once? Build the profile library first
Firms that bid regularly stop rewriting the same experts every quarter. Consultant & Specialist Profiles builds a maintained set of profiles in your house template, in short, medium and long versions, so the next submission is assembled rather than written.