Massive wins… and kaleidoscopic bids
Sodexo wins HMP Altcourse contract
It’s great to start the year off with a massive win. Two prisons in a row for our partner Sodexo, and now we’re on the case with mobilisation.
This win is testament to those defining principles of what makes better growth. A team of committed, motivated, engaged, talented folks working together to achieve a common purpose. No corporate nonsense, just good people with a focus on the right things to win.
As we try and remember to write 2023 not 2022, we’re knee deep in some lovely, big, complex stuff. A £700m deal goes in this week, and we’re working across live Home Office, DWP, MoJ, SPS, MOD and local government work in the UK. Our international work is expanding too, with work in Sweden, the US, Canada, Ireland and Australia ongoing.
And over a negroni (or 2, but never 3) I was reflecting how it is, 20+ years after starting my notional career, that I still enjoy bidding. And it’s because a bid is a kaleidoscope. An endlessly fascinating lens into an organisation. How it works. Culture. Personalities. Strategy vs reality, internal perception vs external rumours, organisation, process, success factors, leadership styles, working styles, humour, failure.
A bid is just the end product of a deep engagement with an organisation, lasting a few weeks to 2-3 years on some of our partnerships. A creative, messy, complex, challenging and rewarding end-product that continues to stimulate the mind. Albeit an older mind. But the nature of our work, cutting away the specifics of the bid product to the wider capabilities required for success, is shaping our growth strategy.
We now have c20 full time members of the 50D team, and are building capability across five areas that are in real demand, as we accelerate our growth this year past the £2m mark:
Bid management and bid writing: Our bid management and writing team is having fun with the usual January rush of bid submissions – perhaps next Christmas will be different, yeah? And we’re delighted to have one of the best writers in the business join us full time, Alex Arblaster. He might even be better than Andy*, but shhhh don’t tell anyone
Solution and service design: An area of expertise growing with the addition of new team members like Mark Hamilton, who brings technical solution development skills into the team. In addition our partnership with TDL Creative brings amazing visualisation and service design infographic capability to our bid work
Research and advisory: Our research and advisory team is working with the LGA and city regions in the employment market and doing all sorts of complex number crunching (which I don’t understand). We’re also increasing our work in the public sector in related markets – bridging policy, practice and global insight
Commercial finance: We’re investing in our commercial finance team to support clients to undertake complex financial modelling and data analysis to support both bid and business as usual activity
Change and operational improvement: Our change and operational improvement team is also growing, as we support both complex mobilisation and transition work. We’re also helping organisations grapple with complex organisational change and performance improvement challenges
If any of this is of interest… we’re currently recruiting across multiple roles including data analysts, commercial finance modelling, bid writing at all levels, and solution architects. If you’re interested, we’d love to hear from you! Check out our Careers section of the website for contact details.
Andy Bowie
Boss
*this isn’t true