When I heard that the government was putting out a tender that should really be up our (CyberNorth) street I had to take notice. I couldn’t attend the briefing and ended up paying someone to attend on my behalf, that’s how important it felt. In this way we were registered as interested and therefore eligible to bid for the contract. Sometimes you have to play the game.
Now the invitation to tender (ITT) has come out and I have set some time aside to start work on it. Timescales are tight but I am not too worried as there are a few weeks at least.
What’s worrying me, which tenders always do, is whether or not it is worth the effort to fill in. What are the chances of winning it? I keep reminding myself that the chances of not winning are 100% if you don’t enter and so I am sure I will get around to it.
The problem is, without giving too much away, that there are three different skill seats to delivering the bid: some specific skills around delivery; bringing the cyber security sector within the region on board and; being able to complete the bid in a compliant manner. .
Whilst I have some of these skills I don’t have them all and so it is inevitable that CyberNorth will be part of a consortium. I suspect that the winning bid will have to be a consortium anyway and so this stands us in as good a stead as any other.
Fortunately only a small number of organisations have expressed an interest in bidding. Half of them, however, have approached CyberNorth to see if we would like to work on the bid with them. Another company that did not register for the briefing has made similar noises as well.
This embarrassment of riches has left me in a quandary. Should CyberNorth lead its own bid with some identified local talent or should it get in bed with another consortium, led by one of the other organisations? Perhaps it should work with a number of consortia or even do both. Much of the work will be the same whether we go with someone else or go it alone and so I can put that decision off until another day.
I’ve set myself a decision day, towards the back end of the week. I really can’t put it off any longer than that.
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 