Oakleigh School Case Study

Situation:

Oakleigh School and The Early Years Centre provides for children who have severe and complex learning difficulties in the London Borough of Barnet. The Children who attend this school are in possession of an Education, Health and Care Plan in which the Local Authority have named Oakleigh. In order to provide a range of after school and holiday activities for their students, the school depend on funding from Barnet Council. This is required to be tendered for on a 6-yearly basis, where providers are expected to complete a robust ITT process.

Tasks/Challenges:

Consequently, Oakleigh School contacted Hudson’s in April 2019 for support in completing the ‘Short Breaks’ tender, as they had struggled to submit a high- quality submission previously. The tender asked for a lot of detail within very limited wordcounts, which made the task of conveying the impressive range of services and experience offered by Oakleigh very challenging. It was essential that the finished tender accurately showcased the long and exceptional service delivery offered by Oakleigh School, to ensure that they had the best possible chance of securing funding for the following 6-years.

Activity:

Gaining in-depth information from the beginning was necessary to ensure that the tender reflected the huge depth of expertise that Oakleigh offered. The bid was assigned to Emma Nelson (Bid Writer), who undertook the following actions to ensure that the tender was turned around in a timely fashion and to the highest possible standard:

• Emma developed a detailed Bid Plan at the very outset, breaking down each question to ensure that all required information was requested from the client at this stage, which would help to prevent delays further down the line
• Once the Bid Plan had been sent to the contact at the School, Emma arranged and carried out a phone call, where she and the school contact went through each part of the Bid Plan in fulsome detail. This ensured that the client understood everything being asked of them, why it was being asked and how it would benefit the tender.
• Once all of the information had been collated, Emma created a first draft, ensuring that she undertook sufficient research into the history of service delivery from Oakleigh School and the aims of Barnet Council.
• The tender went through a thorough internal review process to ensure that all areas of importance had been adequately covered within the confines of the wordcount.

Results:

Specific results achieved under this project are as follows:

• Emma worked proactively and closely with the client to extract information, understand their ethos and accurately portray their service delivery.
• The client was successful in their tendering efforts and were awarded all of the funding that they had applied for, ensuring that they will be able to continue providing invaluable after-school and holiday support services for children with severe and complex learning needs.
• We formed an excellent relationship with Oakleigh which has secured their intent to utilise us again for future tendering efforts for Funding with Barnet Council.

“Emma and the team did a fantastic job for us; the Procurement Manager at the Council informed us that our tender submission was so strong, they used it as a benchmark for scoring other submissions. We are thrilled with the result and will be back to use Hudson for future funding applications without a doubt.” Lorraine Ferris, OOPS Manager