As a company edgeofmyseat.com don’t need to do a lot of responding to tenders. We sometimes help our design agency clients with their pitches but it is fairly rare for us to get a RFP direct to us. However, when we do get sight of these documents – perhaps because we have been approached directly to do development work for a company that already has a designer on board – I am often very surprised at the amount of work they expect us to do at a very early stage. Just to be able to have the “opportunity” of pitching for the work.

作为一家公司， edgeofmyseat.com不需要做很多招标工作。 我们有时会帮助我们的设计机构客户解决问题，但是对于我们而言，直接向我们寻求RFP的机会很少。 但是，当我们确实看到这些文档时-也许是因为直接与我们联系来为一家已经拥有一名设计师的公司进行开发工作时-我常常对他们期望我们在工作中所做的大量工作感到惊讶。非常早期。 只是为了有机会投身工作。

The main issue I have with these tenders is that they directly ask, or at least insinuate, that what should be submitted is an entire proposal for the development of the application. They often ask large numbers of very detailed questions about technology, approach and the finer points of how we would recommend certain features be implemented. To fully respond to these documents would take a couple of days of time for a senior developer – if we were to really do our response justice – essentially a couple of days of free consulting for the company putting out the tender.

这些投标书的主要问题是，它们直接要求或至少暗示要提交的文件是有关开发申请的完整建议。 他们经常问很多关于技术，方法以及我们如何建议实现某些功能的细节的非常详细的问题。 要完全响应这些文件，对于一位高级开发人员来说，如果我们真的要做出公正的回应，则将需要几天的时间，实际上是为公司进行招标提供了几天的免费咨询。

As far as I am concerned this is as much spec work as asking design agencies to pitch with concepts. So when we are asking to put forward a proposal for these jobs, then our response tends to be a polite “no, thank you”. Even when the work looks interesting and very much the sort of project we could do well.

就我而言，这就像要求设计机构提出概念一样多。 因此，当我们要求为这些工作提出建议时，我们的回应往往是客气的“不，谢谢”。 即使当工作看起来很有趣并且在很大程度上，我们也可以做得很好。

If an agency is spending a lot of time responding to tenders then they have to recoup that cost somehow, in our case it would mean having to charge a higher hourly rate for all jobs to cover the non-billable time used in responding.

如果代理机构花费大量时间来响应招标，那么他们必须以某种方式收回成本，在我们的情况下，这意味着必须为所有工作收取更高的小时费，以弥补响应中所用的非计费时间。

In addition to the amount of non-billable time these proposals will consume, this work is in reality free consultancy for the person or company requesting the tenders. They can start the process with very sketchy ideas as to how their application should work, get 10 companies to present their concepts and suggestions and take all that knowledge, research and understanding with them to the final build – without paying a penny. When your input is ideas and experience it would be very difficult to prove that the information came from you, it isn’t the same as someone stealing a design concept. There are the occasional instances where an agency could cry foul over an idea that was so unique it would have been unlikely to have also come from another source, but these are unusual. This post from Solid State Group makes for interesting reading.

除了这些提案将花费的非计费时间外，这项工作实际上是为招标人或公司提供免费咨询的。 他们可以使用非常粗略的想法来开始该过程，以了解其应用程序如何工作，让10家公司提出其概念和建议，并将所有的知识，研究和理解带到他们的最终构架中，而无需花一分钱。 当您的想法和经验是您的输入时，很难证明信息来自您，这与窃取设计概念的人不同。 在某些情况下，代理机构可能会因某个想法如此独特而大声疾呼，以至于不太可能也来自其他来源，但这是不寻常的。 Solid State Group的这篇帖子值得一读。

When it comes to clients with whom we have an existing relationship we are always happy to discuss ideas and approaches prior to a project beginning – that is all part of a good business relationship. However I will not give away days of consultancy to every company who turns up with a large document and a distant promise of a profitable job.

当涉及与我们有现有关系的客户时，我们总是很乐意在项目开始之前讨论想法和方法，这是良好业务关系的一部分。 但是，我不会为每一个提出大量文件和遥遥无期承诺赚钱的公司提供咨询服务。

We have found that often these vague proposals expecting a lot of work are because the end client does not have a clear idea of what they want to do. With projects we have taken on we have found that a good approach is to suggest an initial stage of consultancy work. We work with the client and their designer to come up with a specification for the work, often producing wireframes of functionality; making suggestions for approaches and technology; essentially bringing our experience as developers to their ideas. At the end of that process that work is handed over to the client – along with a quote for our development services if we were to continue and build the project. However if they decide to then take the work elsewhere, there are no hard feelings, we have been paid for our consultancy work and we would hope that our years of experience will help to get the project off to a good start.

我们发现，这些含糊不清的提案往往需要大量工作，这是因为最终客户对他们想做什么没有一个清晰的想法。 通过我们进行的项目，我们发现一种好的方法是建议咨询工作的初始阶段。 我们与客户及其设计师合作，为工作制定规范，通常会制作功能性线框； 为方法和技术提出建议； 实质上将我们作为开发人员的经验带入了他们的想法。 在该过程结束时，工作将移交给客​​户，如果我们继续并构建项目，还将提供开发服务的报价。 但是，如果他们决定将工作转移到其他地方，则不会有艰难的感觉，我们的顾问工作已获得报酬，并且我们希望我们多年的经验将有助于使该项目有一个良好的开端。

As I mentioned at the beginning of this article we are fortunate in that most our our work comes via long-term partnerships with the design agencies we work with, or from people who have already decided that we are the company they would like to work with. I know that many companies do get a lot of their work via responding to tenders and I would be interested in hearing how other people manage responding to RFPs, and balance that with billable work, and not giving away a lot of consultancy time for free in the process.

正如我在本文开头提到的，我们很幸运的是，我们的大部分工作是通过与我们合作的设计机构的长期合作关系，或者已经确定我们是他们愿意与之合作的公司的人们进行的。 。 我知道许多公司确实通过响应招标而获得了很多工作，我很想听听其他人如何管理对RFP的响应，并与可计费的工作保持平衡，而不是浪费大量的咨询时间进行中。