Head of Bids

Head of Bids

Location: Staford

Salary: £70,000 - £80,000

Our client, a market leader in the Defence Maritime industry, is looking to recruit for a Head of Bids. The position will entail leading, planning, scheduling, and overseeing the timely development and delivery of high-quality responses to the most complex, strategic proposal efforts across the enterprise. This role will involve collaborative work across the SMaP LoB to offer guidance, thought leadership, hands-on proposal management, and industry best practice training for proposal teams. Objectives will be achieved through direct action and cross-functional engagement with other teams.

This critical role directly manages and oversees the largest, most strategic bid opportunities across the company. The individual should specialise in creating and preparing proposals, ensuring the timeliness and accuracy of submissions, as well as ensuring the highest quality, most compelling proposals possible. Responsibilities include producing proposal management plans, estimating resources and staffing, and developing and translating solutions and strategies into compliant proposal structures.

Key Responsibilities:

• Leading the planning and execution of the overall proposal development effort, including all deliverables to the customer.
• Identifying the strengths and skills gap of the proposal team and leading training and skills development in win theme and discriminator development, proposal outlining, writing, etc.
• Collaborating and coordinating with organic proposal teams within SMaP.
• Ensuring the quality of deliverables (RFI response, proposal response, clarifications, demos, etc.) to the customer and full compliance with customer requirements or as otherwise agreed.
• Developing and maintaining the proposal management plan as the roadmap for proposal development.
• Determining staffing needs and priorities of the capture team, focused on proposal development.
• Providing inputs to capture budget with a focus on proposal development and adjusting budget requests over time as circumstances change.
• Leading the development of storyboards, RFP outline and compliance matrix, questions/comments on RFP.
• Conducting and presenting PTW analysis.
• Ensuring strategy and win themes are embodied in the proposal and other key deliverables.
• Planning for, participating in, or leading colour team reviews – Shipley process.
• Managing activities of section leads, writers/editors, and proposal coordinator, working in partnership with the capture manager and/or operations lead.
• Providing proposal development training in industry best practices including proposal management, proposal writing, graphics, and action captions, colour team reviews, outlining, storyboarding and mockups, theme statements and discriminators, and other related topics.
• Responsible for creating industry-leading proposal infrastructure utilizing MS Teams and SharePoint infrastructure.
• Overseeing proposal production and editing.
• Arranging and leading gate reviews at the appropriate levels

Essential Skills:

• Degree qualified - Engineering or Technical Degree (distinct advantage) or equivalent competency and experience.
• Occasional travel may be required.
• Experience of managing complex high-value bids and proposals.

Desired Skills:

• Knowledge of Microsoft Dynamics.
• Knowledge of the relevant customer base including NCHQ and DE&S / SDA / DNO
• Advanced degree or MBA.
• Ability to understand, communicate and market technology and product capability / offerings.
• Track record of managing successful technical bids through order placement.
• Excellent technical report/proposal writing.
• Willingness to work out of normal business hours and time zone.
• Proven track record of managing successful marketing campaigns for complex systems to government, navy and prime contractors.
• Experience in Signature Management and/or Naval Power Systems is a distinct advantage.
• Demonstrated ability to establish and develop effective relationships with partners and suppliers.

Benefits:

Flexible working – Hybrid

Annual bonus

Competitive pension scheme

The successful candidate must be able to obtain relevant security requirements for the role.