Competence of the Powerful

Not all that are powerful are competent. One does not necessarily create the other.

For such a grand opening, you’d think that I was about to go off on a wild tangent about a large matter of public debate, No - I am moaning about the job again. Even though I have been writing tender responses for thirty years, I still find something that disappoints me and outrages me in equal measure almost every day.

The latest thing is not a ’latest thing’ by any means. It’s been commonplace for as long as I can remember.

When you respond to a tender, you are responding to an essentially legally binding contract. The commitments you make are within the purview of the client to accept as binding on you to deliver. No lies are permitted, no mistakes are allowed; the process itself is governed by countless rules. As I mentioned in my previous essay, these areas are the ones in which I make my living. That Valley of Skill puts food in my family and keeps a roof over our heads.

A client for whom I write tenders - or the day job - turns to me to tap into my familiarity with the process, the ability to understand where the rules can flex a little and where they are rigid, and where the actual need of a potential customer exists, written in the ancient runes of their tender documentation, as established by the Procurement Act 2023 and the many, many varied interpretations therein, as modified by the tender documentation.

• I may be compelled to write many thousands of words and fit them in a single cell in an excel spreadsheet (yes, I have been asked to do that many times).
• The font size and font face is usually dictated - to the most anodyne, boring, font that ever exists - good old Arial. (for it’s apparent universal access - at least amongst the Microsoft Office dwelling crowd, anyway).
• Evidence is required of a suppliers skill, bravery, ability, timeliness, qualifications, magical shaman wielding abilities, the capacity to muster a team of many people who all understand a multi-hundred page contract, a many hundred page client specification, and can pass on their rapidly acquired knowledge to a team of many more delivery experts such that a mistake is never made, reports are delivered on time, and everything runs smoothly immediately. (Like that good old AI prompt ‘Do this loosely described thing, MAKE NO MISTAKES’).

And yet - yet - despite these many demands, clearly spelled out and typically cause of many a potential suppliers’ demise over what is frankly a fucking pointless technicality - the client retains the right to cancel at a whim, with no notice, no financial penalty, and also reserves the right to litter their documentation with countless errors which are flat out denied should they ever be raised as a clarification request.

Van Halen had a famous demand on their rider: a bowl of M&Ms in their dressing room with all the brown ones taken out. If a single brown one was found, it called into question the hosts’ ability to follow instructions, and frequently resulted in a cancelled show. I get it. The rock band was legendary. Their performances were a fantastic display of majesty.

Clients are about to procure a usually expensive, detailed service or product, so I understand that they have demands; but any reasonable human being would expect those demands to be backed up by an equally high standard of client documentation. I’m afraid that I cannot tell you how many times I have seen fundamental errors, miscalculations, and flat out garbage in a client spec or documents:

• The one who demanded a KPI measure on a standard that was impossible to deliver if their technical requirements were met.
• The specification which stated a set of qualifications as ‘desirable’, but when questioned on the scoring for these, insisted these were in fact mandatory, despite black and white evidence to the contrary.
• Questions with a answer word limit that is half the length of the question it is supposed to answer.
• Demands that an electronic document be printed, physically signed in ink, then scanned and submitted - as if that was any more binding than an electronic copy of the same signature.
• A (very old) requirement that the tender response be provided as twelve hard copies, despite the final response being over TWO THOUSAND PAGES LONG, including the ‘Sustainability Study’ that asked us how we were going to help them reduce their carbon footprint.
• Tender portals that will happily email all potential suppliers that ‘documents have been changed’ without telling us what - in a suite of 27 documents - has actually been changed.

The list is frankly, fucking endless.

To add insult to injury, the clarification process is always supposed to be one in which potential suppliers ask intelligent questions, seeking clarification on a requirement that isn’t quite clear, only to be met with sarcasm, snarky remarks, and flat out lies. I’ve frequently dropped a bid purely because of the potential customers’ attitude - if they are going to behave like that when trying to find a supplier, what on earth would they be like when working with them to deliver on their (loosely / poorly specified) requirements?

The clarification process is one in which a careful supplier can quickly assess the competence of their competition, and the equally low competence of their potential customer. My rule of thumb is the longer the clarification Q&A, the poorer the quality of the tender.

And there I rest my case. It’s a rant. I’m sick of being beholden to incompetence. I would very much prefer to work in the company of - and for - professional experts who correct their mistakes with good grace and aren’t dumb enough to ask a question before reading the documents.

There are powerful customers and suppliers alike. Power does not beget competence, neither does competence signal power.

The latter is always the better to work with.