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How are Courier Delivery Contracts Evaluated?

Posted on by John Hudson

Courier delivery contracts explained

Securing courier delivery contracts for your business can be a lucrative opportunity. If you’ve never tendered before you may be a little confused about what is required and how it’s evaluated. Hopefully this blog will give you a better idea.

Courier delivery contracts are used by a variety of businesses and industries. For example:

  • Medical equipment distribution
  • Courier taxi services
  • Distribution of food supplements
  • Medical sample transportation
  • Government documents
  • Courier and warehouse services
  • Postal services.

Recently, courier delivery contracts have had a specific focus on:

  • Innovation
  • Sustainability
  • Technology
  • Low carbon logistics.

This means you can expect buyers to ask how you will deliver on these aspects. If you don’t already take these into consideration, you probably start thinking about it. Buyers will be expecting to see how your business delivers these aspects compared to your competitors.

How courier delivery contracts are evaluated

Generally speaking, courier delivery contracts are evaluated on two (or three) things:

Quality

The quality section of your tender will likely have a higher weighting, particularly if it’s for a public sector organisation.

Example questions you may be asked in a courier delivery contract include, but aren’t limited to:

  • What resources does the tenderer propose to put in place to deliver the service?
  • Set out the way in which you will provide a sustainable, low carbon logistics service that minimises any negative impact on the city’s traffic congestion problems?
  • Set out the way in which you will provide a secure service, adhering to the buyer’s Information Security Policy.
  • Please provide details of how the solution will provide the flexibility required to match the buyer’s future needs.

Social Value (public sector)

As of January 2021, public sector contracts have a minimum mandatory weighting of 10% on social value. This means you must take into consideration the social, economic and environmental aspects of the contract. Be reminded that you should make promises you can keep. Buyers expect you to fulfil these promises, so don’t promise the world if you can’t deliver.

It’s best to do some research to see what the buyer supports. Then you can align your social value to theirs. Your social value promises should:

  • Create new jobs and promote skills (apprenticeships etc)
  • Encourage economic growth (pay employees the National Living Wage)
  • Support COVID-19 recovery (employ local community)
  • Tackle climate change (reduce carbon emissions/encourage recycling)
  • Level up the UK.

If you’re tendering for a private sector organisation, you may not have to consider social value. It all depends on what the buyer wants.

Price

The price assessment will account for a certain percentage of the evaluation criteria. The cost must be the best and final offers. Bear in mind that the price you give is typically contractually binding.

Overall, for public sector courier delivery contracts, the contract will be awarded to the most economically advantageous tender. This is known as the MEAT. It is when the buyer assesses your bid based on more than just the price. The aspects your bid may be evaluated on may include:

  • Technical ability
  • Accessibility
  • Environmental benefits
  • Ability to deliver on time
  • Innovation
  • Social characteristics

What your bid specifically will be evaluated on will be noted in the tender documents.

Need assistance when writing your next courier delivery contracts?

We understand running your own business can take up a lot of your time. You may not have the resources to time to write a winning response in house. Luckily for you, our sister company at Hudson Succeed know the trials and tribulations of writing a winning bid.

Our Bid Writers have an 87% success rate and over 60-years of bidding experience. We offer four bid writing solutions to suit your tendering needs.

Tender Ready

Tender Ready is the perfect programme for those who are completely new to tendering. You’ll have access to an expert Bid Consultant to answer any questions that you may have. You’ll also get a year’s subscription to our Transport Tenders portal.

Tender Improvement

If you have already been applying for tenders but aren’t seeing success our Tender Improvement package can help. Our Bid Writers will go over your previous submissions and provide feedback and guidance.

Tender Writing

Have you found the perfect courier delivery contract for your business but are struggling to start? Send it over to our Bid Writing team and they can write the whole response for you. If you use our Tender Writing service, they’ll even submit it on your behalf!

Tender Mentor  

Our Bid Writers can look over a bid response you’ve already written, checking it for errors before you submit. Sometimes you just need another pair of eyes to go over your response and our Tender Mentor service can help.

Where can I find courier delivery contracts for my business?

If you’re wondering how to get courier contracts in the UK – we can help. Searching for courier delivery contracts can take up a lot of your time – time you just don’t have to spare. Well, luckily for you, we have a solution.

Transport Tenders hosts hundreds of new opportunities in the logistics industry from across the UK. Our Opportunity Trackers manually search and upload live tenders daily from both the public and private sectors. You can filter results via keyword, budget, location and more. You no longer have to rely on inaccurate CPV codes. This means you’ll never miss out on courier delivery contracts for your business.

Below are previous courier delivery contracts sourced on our portal:

Courier Services – Multi Lot

CPD – Supplies and Services Division- Northern Ireland- Budget: Undisclosed

Courier Services to Children’s Health Ireland

Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital, Crumlin- International- Budget: Undisclosed

Courier Services: Temperature Controlled, Hazardous Material & Medical Records

East Of England NHS Collaborative Hub- Eastern- Budget: Undisclosed

Courier and Specialist Movements

Crown Commercial Service- North West- Budget: £2,000,000,000

Provision of Courier Services

Royal Berkshire Fire Authority- South East- Budget: £40,000

A subscription to Transport Tenders could increase your chances of securing courier delivery contracts. With the time saved and numerous opportunities found, Transport Tenders can feed seamlessly into your business development strategy. With a subscription to the portal, you receive:

  • Unlimited access to the Transport Tenders portal. Increase your chance of success.
  • A dedicated Account Manager on hand to help you will all logistics tenders.
  • A free 20-minute phone consultation. Chat to one of our team about a contract you’re interested in. We can provide expert advice, insight and guidance to support your tendering efforts.
  • A daily email bulletin of all the logistics tenders published that day helping you stay ahead of the game.

On Transport Tenders, we post contracts for:

Book a free live demo today for a quick tour of our portal. Get in touch to learn more about our bespoke bid writing services.

Want to save even more time?

Upgrading to Discover Elite can save you even more time, helping you identify tendering opportunities even when you’re busy. Our two time-saving tools can improve your competitor awareness and bidding success rate.

Contact us for more information on how we can help your business grow.

A Guide to Delivery Contracts

Posted on by John Hudson

Everything you need to know about delivery contracts

Do you want to tender for delivery contracts but are unsure where to start? The tendering process can be confusing for any industry. In the logistics industry, the delivery and courier service are expanding so it can be a competitive market. We’ve put together a guide on everything you need to know about delivery contracts.

How can I bid my courier business for work?

If you’re looking for some ways to distribute delivery contracts but unsure how to, we can help:

  • Create a services list

You must know what kind of delivery service you can provide. For example, what type of transport will you use? A lorry, a van or a car? Think about the weight and size of the products you can carry. There’s no point telling people you can deliver a sofa if you only have a small car. You can offer additional services if you are able to handle fragile objects. Or are you able to provide a refrigerated truck for goods that need to stay chilled?  You need to make sure you can actually provide what you’re stating you can.

  • Develop a fee structure

You need a guide to the fees you want to charge i.e., per mile. You need to know how much you need to bid to make a profit. Fees should vary depending on the type of delivery and local rates. You should think about whether you will incur additional charges. This could be based on the weight of the product or if you’re delivering out of hours.

  • Contact potential local clients

With services and fees outlined you’re in a good position to start finding and bidding for delivery contracts. You could reach out to local businesses that may be in need of delivery drivers. These may include:

  • Pharmacies that need medication delivered
  • Delivering for the hospitality industry
  • Legal businesses that may need paperwork delivering more quickly

How can I be successful with delivery contracts?

We’ve put together some tips to help you win your delivery contract bid.

  1. Read the tender documents

Carefully read through the documents to understand exactly what the bid is asking of you. You will need to be sure you can definitely meet the requirements. Once you have read the tender documents you can decide whether the tender is for you or not.

  1. Managing your journeys

As you’re providing a service that is transporting goods, you need a process for managing journeys. Think about:

  • How will you coordinate your journeys?
  • Will you use any technology to help with journeys?
  • How is your system efficient and will it save you money?
  • How will you deal with delays?

  1. Provide evidence

 Providing evidence is key if you want to win a tender. It’s no point saying you can do ‘x, y and z’ if you have no way of backing it up. The buyer wants to see previous examples of how you’ve provided a similar service in the past. If you don’t back up what you’re saying, why should the buyer believe you? Seeing is believing.

  1. Answer all the questions

Don’t leave any questions blank! This will not look good to the examiner. If you’re incapable of answering the question, how can you be capable of delivering the contract? Remember if a question requires a 500-word answer don’t answer it in two sentences. You won’t have answered the question in full. Answer the question in as much detail as you can.

  1. Allow plenty of time

People often underestimate the amount of time it takes to write a tender and submit it. Not to mention the preparation work such as reading the tender documents or asking clarification questions. The last thing you want to do is rush the whole process and lose the bid. Make sure you put aside plenty of time to get everything completed on time.

  1. Proofread

The final step to winning your delivery contract is to proofread. We often see people lose marks because they’ve submitted a bid that has spelling mistakes or grammatical error. This could have been avoided if they’d taken the time to proofread the document. Check your work multiple times as it can be easy to miss errors on a first skim through.

We recommend asking someone else to check over your work too. Having a second person review your work can help pick up any issues you may have missed. It’s good for someone else to read the document who wasn’t involved in writing it. Additionally, you may want to consider leaving a day or two in between making your final edit and proofread. This way you will have your own fresh pair of eyes to help spot any errors.

Transport Tenders

A subscription to Transport Tenders could increase your chances of securing delivery contracts. With time saved and numerous opportunities found, Transport Tenders can feed seamlessly into your business development strategy. With a subscription to the portal, you receive:

  • Unlimited access to the Transport Tenders portal. Increase your chance of success.
  • A dedicated Account Manager on hand to help you will any and all logistics tenders.
  • A free 20-minute phone consultation. Chat to one of our team about a delivery contract you’re interested in. We can provide expert advice, insight and guidance to support your tendering efforts.
  • A daily email bulletin of all the logistics tenders published that day helping you stay ahead of the game.

Transport Tenders is a time-saving tool that allows you to focus on running your business, while we source tendering opportunities, directly relevant to your service offering. It’s because we’re passionate about business growth. Every company should have the chance to succeed – and we know that Transport Tenders will fit perfectly into your business growth strategy.

On Transport Tenders, we post contracts for:

Book a free live demo today for a quick tour of our portal. Get in touch to learn more about our bespoke bid writing services.