Bids Team Lead

Why Atkins?

Atkins is one of the world’s most respected design, engineering and project management consultancies. we have been providing infrastructure planning, engineering, construction, environmental consulting, urban planning, architecture, and program management services to public and private sector clients across Saudi Arabia for more than 50 years.

Atkins in the middle east now employs around 2,000 staff serving gulf clients across all market sectors from offices in Abu Dhabi, Al Ain, Doha, Dubai, Jeddah, Kuwait City, Manama, Muscat, Riyadh, and Sharjah. acquired by SNC-Lavalin in 2017, we also have an extensive depth of geographic exposure across 50 countries and the breadth of 53,000 experts. as one of the largest engineering consultants, we are one of the largest multidisciplinary consultancies in the region, able to offer our staff global mobility through work opportunities in our wide global network.

we’re a people business; we hire and retain only the best people in the industry. our success is built on recruiting – and then developing – brilliant people from a broad range of professional and cultural backgrounds. it’s precisely this diversity of talent that sets us apart.

Role Mission:

Reporting To The Atkins KSA Marketing & Proposals Director, The Bids Team Lead Will Individually Perform, And Lead A Team Of Bid Managers To Produce Highly Strategic Proposals That Are Professional, Compliant And Competitive.

Atkins seeks an energetic and highly-motivated self-starter to join our KSA win-work team as a bids team lead. this position will be based at our Riyadh, kingdom of Saudi Arabia office. the role reports to the marketing & proposals director.

Key Responsibilities:

Proposal Management

• Ensures the effective use of the Atkins Saudi Arabia win-work proposal development process and tools, for all bids, to maximize the opportunity of winning by producing repeatable, reliable results

• Leads large/complex proposals by coordinating multiple stakeholders to deliver high-quality, bid and strategy compliant, winning and approvable bids on time. 

• Proactively collaborate with account managers to develop the capture plan, and its implementation for all major/complex proposals

• Defining and agreeing a bid budget and schedule baseline (with the bid director) and controlling the bid budget and schedule against these agreed baselines.

• May lead capture planning / win-strategy planning sessions

• Generates top down financial estimates, and uses benchmarking tools to support financial models

• Facilitates proposal kickoff meetings and regular status calls

• Ensuring all necessary information, guidelines and supporting documentation is available to successfully undertake commercial and quality review activities.

• Ensuring all necessary information and documentation is available to successfully undertake service delivery process stage gate reviews and gaining the requisite approvals.

• Facilitates risk workshops, together with the risk management team

• Creates the bid outline, or answer plan, to facilitate inputs, as required, from the appropriate delivery groups to create a compliant, responsive, and competitive bid

• Reviews, edits, and provides guidance on the creation of cover letters, executive summaries, and other key parts of proposals

• Identify weaknesses in proposal documents and creative ways to improve

• Use mastery of English language to perform edits and polish near-final drafts to client submission quality standard

• Develop graphical content (organization charts, info graphics, photographs) with project team and graphics specialists.

• Lead teams through strategic reviews (pink, red, green, gold, and iqr)

• Adheres to all corporate policies and procedures including compliance, risk and levels of authority

• Presents to senior management in order to obtain necessary approvals in compliance with the levels of authority

• Works with the commercial and legal team to disposition critical terms, in order to best align with client expectations while maintaining Atkins’ risk tolerance profile

• May act as the single point of contact with key partners or subcontractors during proposal development

• By working collaboratively with the commercial and legal teams, facilitates the development and execution of teaming agreements with strategic partners on behalf of the proposal. In support of partnering agreements, will play a key role in the development of alignment tools including, but not limited to; business partner due diligence reviews, division of responsibility matrices, subcontracted scopes of work, subcontract terms and conditions, etc.

• Works together with the commercial team to ensure timely and accurate entry of information into the project approval system (pas), actively contributes to justification/mitigations for final contractual positions

• Anticipates and mitigates potential delays to proposal submission, ultimately ensuring on-time delivery of the proposal approvals

• enforces company approved style guidelines, and ensures a consistent look and feel of all outgoing bids

• Ensure that the company’s code of ethics and business conduct is adhered to at the highest level at all times

• Together with the proposal team, facilitate the responses to client’s proposal clarification requests

• Highlight and take necessary action in the case of any potential Conflicts Of Interest (COI); Adhering To Any And All Project Related COI Disclosure Requirements

• Actively support transition from project capture to project implementation

• Leads the post proposal submission interview presentation,

• Ensuring the team has the correct level of creative input and coaching support to enable a winning approach

• Lead internal lessons learned debrief

• Participate in Development and Maintenance Of Proposal Content Library.

Team Management/Development:

• Manage a team of between 1 and 5 direct reports, relating to support on large/complex bids

• Provide leadership and mentoring support for all bid managers; leading any escalation requests.

• Provide leadership and training for proposal management process and proposal best practices

• Play a key leadership role in the professional development and personal career growth of proposal team members. analyze and evaluate team effectiveness in delivering proposal activities and recommend specialist training needs for the proposal team members as appropriate

• Establish performance goals and administer annual performance evaluations and salary reviews for reporting roles

• Monitor the bid team’s bid budget and schedule baseline performance against the agreed baselines.

• Ensures the 100% on-time delivery and submission of winning, compliant, high-quality, compelling proposals to our clients

• Ensure the proposal closeout process is performed accurately and completely to support business financials and sales forecasting reporting

• Ensure All Bid Managers’ Pursuits Are Accurately Tracked Through CRM/BWS System

Requirements:

The Ideal Candidate Will:

• Be educated to BSc. degree level or equivalent professional qualification in an engineering discipline or project management. master’s degree an asset

• PMP certification will be an asset

• Experience with Shipley or Miller Heiman sales methodology. APMP qualification will be a preferred asset

• Minimum 10 years of experience in developing and managing proposal submissions

• Minimum 1 -5 years of experience in managing direct reports, including hiring, reviewing performance and providing training, coaching and development

• Ideally have experience of working in a professional consultancy services environment

• Be capable and comfortable working with a cross-functional team of business development, technical experts, commercial/risk, legal, marketing/proposals, human resources, and others.

• Be a terrific professional networker that is able to quickly assimilate the organization chart, and identify appropriate authors, section and volume leaders, subject matter experts (SMEs) and other support personnel to successfully develop a proposal.

• Have experience in the middle east design consultancy sector

• Experience managing a proposal team for a medium- or large-sized company, preferably in the engineering or professional services industry

• Experience managing remotely-located team members and staff

• Superior communication skills including the ability to facilitate meetings, communicate with virtual and large teams and apprise management on milestones and risks

• Ability to communicate and influence at a senior level

• Strong time management / prioritization skills

• Ability to coach proposal content generators and subject matter experts in persuasive writing and proposals best practices

• Be experienced in leading and facilitating workshops to drive winning strategies

• Results-oriented with an extremely high work ethic, stringent quality standards, and can-do attitude

• Be assertive, enthusiastic, highly organized, methodical and flexible

• Possess strong people leadership skills

• Strong project management skills

• Proactive nature, particularly with regards to continuous process improvement

• Experience in major projects delivery, with p3 experience an asset.

• Efficient with acute attention to detail. be the quality standard bearer

• Excellent written and spoken English, with ability to correct grammar, spelling, punctuation and narrative flow.

• Possess advanced skills in microsoft software suite (word, excel, visio, outlook, PowerPoint,  dynamics CRM) and adobe acrobat InDesign

Rewards & Benefits:

We Offer an excellent package which includes:

• A Competitive Salary

• Transportation Allowance

• Medical And Life Insurance Cover

• 22 Calendar Days Annual Leave

• Medical And Life Insurance Cover

• Company Gratuity Scheme

• Discretionary Bonus Scheme

• Annual Flight Allowance To Point Of Origin

• Employee Assistance Programme: 24-Hour Free Advice On Financial, Legal And Family Care Specialists, And Access To Personal Health, Fitness And Nutrition Consultants