I have now been with I & H Brown for over two years, in the position of Bid Manager, having spent most of my career prior to that very much based on site, or responsible for a number of sites.
The ultimate aim of my role is to win sufficient, profitable work for our business – easier said than done! The role is fairly broad ranging dealing with Prequalification and Tender submissions, liaising with clients on current and future workload, and trying to manage the workload in an unpredictable market.
During the past two years we have had a steady stream of tenders and priced around £350m of projects – unfortunately we haven’t been successful on all of them! The variety of projects we look at is certainly one of the more interesting aspects of my role. Also the daily/hourly changes that we need to accommodate as clients refine and develop their requirements through the tender period – it’s certainly a challenge at times.
Looking forward, the market will no doubt continue to be tough, and all Civil Engineering companies will be in there looking for their share of work. Part of my role will be to try to find efficient ways of providing economical tender solutions, an hope to spent some time with our site teams to better understand how we can improve things.
In my spare time I enjoy cycling and have recently taken up Hillwalking and a bit of Ski Mountaineering, as well as the usual family stuff, which like everyone else I should spend more time on.