Adrian Corcoran

The work is to build the solution with the client’s operations team, create win themes that carry the reason to choose that supplier through the response, define the technical solution in enough detail to show delivery is understood, and find evidence to prove it. They call this solution architecture and describe bid writing as its output.

In “The Value of Great Bid People,” they recount a conversation with an AI specialist who said AI can write a bid in an afternoon. They accept the point and list the services Bid for Success provides: customer value proposition and solution development, win theme creation and “the why you,” answer planning and outline responses, bid reviews and scoring evaluations, bid project management, bid administration, and interview preparation and presentation creation.

The post says bidding and the technology behind it continue to evolve, and Bid for Success is adapting its services.

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Companies must not only deliver the work but document their capabilities in a way evaluators can score.

The post describes LHC Procurement Group’s Windows & Doors 3 framework, covering the manufacture, supply, and installation of windows, doors, doorsets, and associated works across the UK.

• Its scope includes communal entrance doors, internal screens, specialist security doors, and window systems for residential, commercial, and education projects.
• Bid for Success says it has a 90%+ win rate on major frameworks for its clients, based on quality, and offers an informal conversation about an application at no charge.

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Adrian Corcoran suggests the message may have gone to 50 or more bidders and asks how that demonstrates best value for the public purse. They argue that bidders are increasingly expected to use common sense and help procurement teams administer their own processes, while procurement practice is not improving as it should.

A client received a chase for a reference form connected to a procurement they had not bid for. Adrian Corcoran uses the incident to question the volume of blanket messages sent to bidders and the administrative burden placed on suppliers.

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Adrian Corcoran highlights live opportunities for maintenance, facilities management, and construction companies, names the framework and its scope, flags the eligibility point that determines whether a company should bid, and offers a free informal conversation about whether the opportunity suits the applicant. The focus is on making the go/no-go decision before committing bid effort.

The Windows & Doors 3 post names the framework, its scope, and its manufacturing capability requirement, then invites readers to discuss the opportunity or their approach free of charge via a direct email contact. It presents this as part of weekly engagement work highlighting opportunities in compliance and supplier-side delivery.

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Start here for the clearest statement of how Adrian Corcoran thinks the work has shifted; it frames the other two posts.

Adrian Corcoran recounts a conversation with an AI specialist and concedes the point: AI produces bids that read well, look professional and often beat the prose written by professional bid teams.

• Rather than defend drafting as a craft, the post shifts the focus to what matters now: telling the client's story to the buying team so they believe the supplier will deliver on day one; building solutions with the operations team that answer the buyer's actual problem; creating win themes and embedding the 'why you' in the storyline; defining the technical solution in enough detail to show an understanding of delivery; and finding proof that delivery is possible.
• Corcoran calls this 'solution architecture' and describes bid writing as its output.
• The post then lists the services that follow: customer value proposition and solution development, win theme creation, answer planning, bid reviews and scoring, bid project management, bid administration, and interview preparation.

For brands planning a campaign

For a construction or FM company trying to lift win rates, this is an argument for what to review before submission.

• Score the response on whether it contains a defined solution, a win theme tied to the buyer's stated problem, and specific delivery evidence—not on polished prose.
• It also makes the case for support that starts before drafting, at the solution and win-theme stage.

Read it to see the method in action.

This post walks through LHC Procurement Group's Windows & Doors 3 (WD3) framework.

• It sets out the scope—manufacture, supply and installation of windows, doors, doorsets and associated works across the UK, covering communal entrance doors, internal screens, specialist security doors, and window systems for residential, commercial and education projects.
• Adrian Corcoran flags the eligibility point that determines whether a company should bid at all: the framework is aimed at organisations with genuine manufacturing capability, so applicants need more than delivery capacity.
• They must evidence quality assurance, traceability, compliance and installer competence in the submission.
• The post states that Bid for Success has a 90%+ win rate on major frameworks for its clients, described as based on quality, and offers a no-charge informal conversation about the opportunity or an applicant's approach, with an email address for contact.

For brands planning a campaign

Use this reading method when assessing a framework: extract the scope, test the capability threshold, then build the submission around the proof the buyer explicitly names. For a manufacturer or installer weighing WD3 or a similar framework, the post offers a template for the pre-bid decision, including a short scoping conversation before committing resources.

Short, first-hand and useful as a reality check on the assumption that buyer administration is reliable.

Adrian Corcoran describes a client receiving a message chasing a reference form for a procurement the client had never bid for.

• The post questions how this happens, speculating that a blanket message went to 50 or more bidders, and asks how that demonstrates best value for the public purse.
• The complaint is specific: bidders bear the burden of catching a buyer's administrative mistake.
• It presents one incident as evidence that procurement practice is not improving as it is supposed to.

For brands planning a campaign

Bid teams should keep their own submission log—which tenders went out, when, and with which references—so they can quickly spot and answer a buyer's misdirected chase without spending billable time investigating. It also sets expectations with clients: not every communication from a contracting authority reflects the actual state of a competition.

They call this “solution architecture”: building the solution with the client’s operations team, creating win themes that carry the “why you” through the storyline, defining the technical solution in enough detail to show the delivery is understood, and finding proof to support it.

• In this framing, bid writing is the output, not the work.
• Bid for Success lists the activities that follow: customer value proposition and solution development, win theme creation, answer planning and outline responses, bid reviews and scoring evaluations, bid project management, bid administration, and interview preparation and presentation creation.

Solution architecture

For brands planning a campaign

A campaign or sponsored series for construction and FM bidders should start where the solution and evidence are built, not at the document template. A workshop or content series could show how to assemble delivery evidence, win themes and technical answers before drafting begins.

Examples: Source 1

Corcoran says the work is to help companies present their experience clearly, demonstrate compliance and make it easy for evaluators to see why they are the right fit. They also point to how often bidders make those points poorly.

For brands planning a campaign

For a manufacturer or installer weighing a framework submission, useful content gets specific about documentation requirements: how to document quality assurance, traceability and installer competence in a way an evaluator can score. A brand can support this territory with practical guidance rather than general bid-writing advice.

Examples: Source 1

The W&D3 post is one example: it names the framework, the scope it covers (manufacture, supply and installation of windows, doors, doorsets, communal entrance doors, internal screens and specialist security doors across residential, commercial and education projects), who it suits and what to do next. Corcoran offers a free informal conversation about whether an opportunity is the right fit, with a direct email contact.

Weekly opportunity briefings

For brands planning a campaign

This repeatable format gives a brand the chance to sponsor or co-produce an opportunity briefing for a specific framework or sector, reaching bidders as they decide whether to apply. Direct contact offers a clear next step for conversion.

Examples: Source 1

The argument is that the administrative burden has shifted onto bidders, who end up helping procurement teams run their own processes, and that procurement is not improving as it is supposed to.

The post criticises a specific procurement practice rather than describing a service or deliverable. It works best as a statement of position, not an offer.

For brands planning a campaign

This is the material’s sharpest, most opinionated territory, suited to a discussion or thought-leadership format on bidder experience and procurement reform. A product claim would sit poorly alongside a grievance post; a practical resource or open conversation better matches the tone.

Examples: Source 1

They provide a Bid for Success contact address and the firm's hashtag. Ask Corcoran to clarify their relationship to the business.

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They recommend the opportunity to readers. Ask Corcoran to clarify whether they or Bid for Success have a commercial relationship with LHC.

View example

Both treat procurement as something being reshaped rather than as a fixed process, and explain the change through concrete buying decisions rather than general statements about technology.

Hill writes from inside the buying function, addressing procurement teams about how their role and decisions are changing, and promotes training built around that shift. Corcoran writes from the supplier side, addressing companies that have to win the tender; their advice covers evidence, win themes, and whether to bid at all.

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Both publish on a steady rhythm, curate outside material for a procurement audience, and comment on how procurement practice is developing.

Lanier focuses on public sector procurement operations in the United States, covering state and local practice, conferences, and reports. Corcoran focuses on UK construction and facilities management tenders and helps suppliers put together a winning submission.

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Corcoran makes the same move in bidding, arguing that evaluators need evidence of delivery rather than polished prose.

O'Donnell writes customer stories and case studies for technology marketing across many industries. Corcoran writes about competitive tender and framework responses in construction, where a scored submission rather than a published story is the end product.

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If a construction or FM company keeps losing tenders because it misreads what procurement teams now optimise for—or wants to give its own commercial and procurement staff a working picture of how AI is changing the buying decision—Hill's posts address that directly.

• One argues that estimating, procurement and commercial teams sit at the boundary where early market intelligence shows up, that the signal is qualitative and currently lost in Teams messages, and that AI can now join it up tender by tender.
• The other separates 'AI for procurement' (tools that speed up existing tasks) from 'procurement for the AI era' (fundamentally different choices between buying technology, outsourcing, partnering, building internally or buying an outcome) and lists the questions that follow: what is being bought, who owns the data and IP, where the risk sits, and how dependent the company becomes.

The posts here are aimed at procurement practitioners and their internal capability, not suppliers building a scored submission.

• They cover neither answer planning, win themes, evidence mapping nor evaluation scoring—the core of a tender response.
• Pay for Hill when the buyer wants the company to think like the buying team and build intelligence it currently throws away; keep Corcoran when the deliverable is the tender response itself.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

The posts are a weekly curated round-up for public-sector operations and public procurement readers: a biennial survey of state procurement practices, Connecticut's challenge-based procurement under a federal Medicaid deadline, a GFOA push to rethink what a budget communicates, AI-in-procurement workshops covering pilots and task-based testing, NIGP award recognition, and EU research comparing a proposed 20-day tender deadline against data from over 169,000 tenders, which found 45 days a stronger point for bidder participation.

This is editorial curation and community knowledge for procurement people, not a supplier-side bid service.

• The posts here contain no construction or FM submission work, no framework application method, and no evidence of writing, reviewing or scoring a tender.
• Lanier can tell a company what public buyers are being told to prioritise; Lanier cannot take the submission and raise its score.
• Use Lanier for market and policy orientation, Corcoran when the task is producing and scoring the response.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

Corcoran argues that once drafts are cheap, the advantage moves to evidence that the bidder can actually deliver; O'Donnell's posts focus on building that layer.

• They list Microsoft customer stories written across healthcare, financial services and fintech, manufacturing and industrial, energy and sustainability, media and creative production, professional services and government, and consumer brands.
• They also state the method: follow the human and business impact, show the customer's challenge and proactivity alongside their success, and keep the product list out of the lead.
• A bid team that needs reference-able stories or interview proof material has a concrete reason to commission that.

The posts describe enterprise technology customer stories, not construction or FM tenders.

• They do not cover framework mechanics, eligibility thresholds, compliance evidence or scoring criteria.
• O'Donnell supplies case studies that can be dropped into a submission or an interview; Corcoran supplies the bid architecture that decides which proof is used, where it sits in the response and how it is scored.
• Commissioning one does not substitute for the other.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2