Transport

Kittle Group supported a joint venture (JV) between a global transport provider, a Japanese rail operator, and an international trading company to prepare their tender for the operation of the Elizabeth line on behalf of Rail for London. This concession contract is estimated to be around £2.5billion over its duration.

As we had just supported one of the JV partners with their bid to operate the Docklands Light Railway, we transitioned much of the same writers to this next exciting assignment. This provided excellent continuity for the client who had already built up a great rapport with our team and had given feedback as to how impressed they were with the quality of work and collaboration. The client was delighted that many of the same writers would support them, and it also meant our team could hit the ground running given we had a matter of weeks to prepare documents running at over 450 pages.

As with all major assignments of this nature, our client’s resourcing requirements changed, but the size of our in-house team allowed us to flex the number of writers – starting with four, then scaling up to seven, before reducing again to three at the very end. The writers were co-located together throughout – whether at the client’s London office alongside their subject matter experts or in our Reading office – which built collaboration between them, consistency, and a high-quality narrative.  Work was also reviewed by one of our Directors as part of our quality assurance process.

This bid is still under evaluation by Rail for London, but our client described Kittle Group’s support as ‘stellar’ and ‘10/10’.

Kittle Group supported a multinational rail client with the preparation of its bid into Rail for London for major infrastructure projects across the London network. This framework had a total contract value of over £200m and included the construction of new stations through to upgrades and refurbishments of the existing structures, such as platforms, canopies, and ticket halls.

Our team of four writers supported the client with both its selection questionnaire and main tender over six months. While our client was the prime contractor, our team also worked with representatives from six significant subcontractors based in the UK, Hong Kong, and Australia. Our writers therefore had to ensure that the bid was consistent across responses and inputs from various SMEs.

Our responses demonstrated our client’s experience and expertise in construction works within an operational rail environment, and their compliance with rail legislation and regulations.

This was a successful project for the client, winning first place on the Rail for London framework.

Our client’s Infrastructure Director gave a gleaming review: “Kittle Group’s input to our recent bids was nothing short of outstanding. The quality of delivery, the strength in depth of their team & their flexibility and agility all go towards making them one of the most effective consultancies of their type.”

Kittle Group supported a multi-national transport group to bid for a 10-year contract to run public and school bus services on the island of Jersey. Our team of three writers wrote eight responses, crafting them to demonstrate how our client will meet the Government of Jersey’s specification and offer additional value.

Our client faced a unique set of circumstances for this bid. Jersey has distinct regulations and procedures that businesses must follow. In addition to this, the client needed to assure the Government of Jersey that adequate plans were in place to transfer vehicles to the island from mainland Britain and that they would be able to source staff on an island with a very high employment rate.

Our writers crafted their responses to address these particular challenges by:

• Familiarising themselves with Jersey’s regulations so the responses used the right language and evidenced how our client’s solution complied with local requirements
• Drafting a detailed plan to transport the client’s buses to the island
• Focussing on how they will manage the transfer of staff from the incumbent operator and increase retention rates
• Detailing how the client would approach Jersey’s government departments
• Localising the service by referencing special events (like Liberation Day, Fete de St. Helier, and the Gorey Fete)
• Describing how the client would address the specific needs of the island and its culture.

We were unsuccessful with this bid, coming second to the incumbent. Our client enjoyed working with us and was really happy with our responses. They are keen to work with Kittle Group again in the future and have recommended us to another client.

We supported an international bus service operator in bidding for three tranches of bus franchises for Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM). We provided a consistent team of writers across each of the bids, which meant we could take learnings from TfGM’s feedback to improve each consecutive bid.

This was the client’s first major experience of bidding for UK-based contracts, and these three tranches were a crucial opportunity for our client to establish a strong foundation for UK bidding. Kittle Group provided writing services, bid reviews, and advisory support to maximise our client’s chances of winning.

For the first tranche, we established an effective collaborative working relationship with the client’s team. We invited them to co-locate at our Reading office and held regular catch-up meetings to review our progress. We made use of a long lead into this bid and created a sizeable bank of collateral to support the drafting process.

Our work on the second tranche was informed by feedback from TfGM on our first submission. With less lead in time, the client’s solution was less developed, and we needed to conduct more detailed storyboarding sessions to capture the necessary detail. We then worked at pace to draft and submit high-quality responses ahead of the deadline.

For the third tranche, four of our writers worked alongside a specialist solution consultancy to enhance the bid. Our writers used their considerable knowledge of the transport sector to draw out key advantages and added value, and drafted responses that were between 30-40 pages each.

We are delighted to say that our client was highly successful in the third tranche, winning 4 out of 5 available lots and securing the £422m contract. They were incredibly pleased with our support, and now consider us a strategic partner for their UK bids.

A joint venture between a UK-based global transport provider, a Japanese rail company, and a Japanese conglomerate, commissioned Kittle Group to support their bid to operate and maintain the Docklands Light Railway (DLR) for Rail for London.

We were brought on to this bid late in the client’s process, with only three weeks remaining until the initial submission deadline. Our client contacted us on a Thursday afternoon, and we onboarded two senior writers and one of our managing directors the following Monday.

Upon our initial review, we recognised that the bid would be improved with increased consistency across the responses and additional sections to define a more complete solution. We shared this with the client, and quickly offered additional senior and experienced writers, explaining the benefits of having multiple writers from one company join their almost exclusively external bid team (e.g., consistency and ease of collaboration).

Ultimately, our team of two writers increased to seven, and Kittle Group re-worked six of the eight responses, totalling c.430 pages out of the final 650-page submission. Each of our writers worked over late hours and weekends to get the bid ready for submission and significantly eased the drastic increase in the volume of work required.

In the bid’s final stage, the client’s senior reviewers scheduled several additional review gates within close succession. As new additions to the team, our writers were able to filter review feedback, lessening some frustrations and enabling SMEs to focus on improving the solution.

The transformational support our writers provided on this project meant that we were requested to support the client on their next major bid. They also recommended our services to their bus division for an upcoming tender.

South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority (SYMCA) invited a long-term Kittle Group client to bid for the ‘Technology Partner’ role for the South Yorkshire tram network. This was a technically complex bid that included providing a new tram management system. The difficulty of the bid, and the importance of the contract prompted the client to commission Kittle Group’s support.

We were brought on a week ahead of the SQ deadline to write eight 4000-word case studies illustrating the client’s experience in managing train and tram services. We initially assigned eight writers to this project, led by a senior writer with substantial experience of time-pressured, complex bids. We also deployed one senior writer and two company directors to provide quality assurance.

SYMCA ultimately issued an extension to the SQ deadline, so we reduced the bid team to two experienced writers who could progress the responses through the review stage. In the final week, when the workload increased again, we reassigned much of the original team to see the bid through.

We engaged with the client on regular calls throughout the bid to receive the necessary information and keep our client updated on the bid’s progress. For the final week, two of our writers co-located in our client’s Glasgow office, enabling face-to-face collaboration to close out one of the most complex responses of the SQ.

Our client was left impressed by our work and commitment, describing our team as ‘fearless’. They passed the SQ stage and intend to use Kittle Group again for the ITT stage.

A returning client commissioned Kittle Group for a bid to provide public bus services in Dublin for Ireland’s National Transport Authority. The contract included recruiting drivers, operating bus services, maintaining the bus fleet, and protecting revenue. It was part of a strategic effort to expand the client’s operations in Ireland.

We provided a team of two writers, who worked with the client’s bid team and various managers and directors from their Dublin-based headquarters. Our writers also had to liaise with the client’s graphic design partner in Australia.

Our writers drafted four 20-25 page responses on mobilisation, customer service, revenue protection, and security management. Throughout this process, we constructively challenged the client’s solution and suggested where they could add value to score top marks.

Our writers worked in the client’s London office two days a week. They also visited Dublin for two days of workshops with the operational team to capture ‘on-the-ground’ insights. This enabled:

• The ability to quickly ask and get answers to questions
• Sitting down with the bid team to effectively address content gaps
• Access to senior managers and directors to capture their insights and feedback.

During the bid’s last stage, we provided a further writer to provide additional support. Our team made final consistency and compliance checks to make sure that the responses would score highly against the evaluation criteria. The client was bidding across three lots, so we also split the responses and tailored them, changing, for example, geographic references and resource numbers.

Our client was delighted to hear they were successful in this £400m bid. We are also pleased to say that the client was very happy with our work and has since booked us onto new projects. The client’s bid manager said it was a ‘pleasure’ working with Kittle Group, and that ‘quality shines through’ in our responses.