Proposal Manager at Wood

About the job

Overview / Responsibilities

• Wood is currently recruiting for a Proposal Manager with extensive experience in the Mining and Minerals or similar sector of the industry to provide support in the business.

Key Accountabilities and Responsibilities:
Success criteria includes:

• Increased win rates within the respective businesses.
• Ensure the business is properly supported.
• Ensure quality of proposals, presentations and other customer responses.
• Through proposal audits, ensure process is being followed and best practices are incorporated into customer responses.
• Increased amount of boilerplate content for respective Business Unit in Knowledge Hub

Summary of responsibilities include:

• Foster the sale of Wood Solutions – Encourage and support cross selling of services for Wood across all markets.
• Maintain list of all active proposals, pre-qualifications and other customer responses with status and submission dates for assigned business.
• Support and contribute to the continual improvement of proposal procedures and processes.
• Take end-to-end ownership and command of proposal development and related support processes and procedures, including written proposals, oral presentations, Best and Final Offers, Evaluation Notices, Final Proposal Revisions, etc.
• Ensure compliance of Strategy & Development-owned Tender Governance Policy gates during pursuit and proposal development.
• Assist Proposals Director in auditing past proposals for businesses within the Business Unit
• Provide training on the proposal process and proposal best practices for all proposal team. members within their respective Business Unit as well as all major stakeholders of the proposal process.
• Manage Proposal Leads and Coordinators for their assigned part of the business including the coordination of workload (allocation of assignments), quality of output, ensure expectations and goals are clear and business is supported.
• Evaluate job performance of Proposal Leads and Proposal Coordinators of respective business
• Ensure incorporation of proposal best practices into all customer responses for respective business.
• Oversee/support pre-proposal positioning where appropriate, as well as proposal development strategies and implementation.
• This includes development of capture plan and proposal planning document development, facilitation of strategy sessions to develop the win strategy and theme/value proposition for proposals.
• Oversee the production of proposals of all sizes/types and other customer responses (including prequalification’s, expressions of interest, presentations, etc) and ensure that the proposal is compliant and delivered on time.
• This key role collaborates with capture management, SMEs, and proposal staff to write, edit, review, and produce winning proposals.
• Proactively directs and provides interface management to a team of complex skills and functions, including (but not limited to) Wood management, Capture Manager, Technical Lead/Project Manager, volume/section leads, authors, SMEs, Legal, Estimating, Commercial, and small business.
• Ensure customer's requirements are fully met. This involves conducting searches for appropriate materials and writing and editing project summaries, resumes of project personnel, and other supporting sections of the proposal, as necessary. Leverages existing archived proposal information.
• Take on responsibility of Proposal Lead or Proposal Coordinator as needed for strategic pursuits and top opportunities, or as required due to workload of proposals team including (but not limited to) the following:
• Assess the Request for Proposal and customer requirements/evaluation criteria.
• Develop and implement the proposal management plan (responsibility/compliance matrix)
• Develop and implement the proposal schedule.
• Lead proposal kick-off and review meetings.
• Oversee and/or expedite the following proposal processes: information gathering and compilation, data entry, formatting, editing, reviews, reproduction and delivery.
• Where appropriate, assist/expedite business development managers in the management review of contract, tax, and insurance requirements.
• Expedite proposal stakeholders to obtain outstanding proposal deliverables per the proposal schedule and in order to make the proposal deadline.
• Ensure consistency and branding compliance for all customer responses.
• Prepare post-bid submissions, organize the response to requests for clarification.
• Manage the development of customer presentations (pre-proposal or post-proposal)
• Oversee/participate in colour/management team reviews.
• Remain current on all solicitation modifications/Q&A and communicates them to the team; Revises schedule, outline, and proposal management plan (responsibility/compliance matrix) as necessary throughout proposal life cycle.
• Review/analyse proposal sections for consistency and clarity, compliance with solicitation requirements, and alignment with proposed solutions and themes and writes/re-writes proposal sections as necessary to deliver high-quality, winning proposals.
• Finalize proposals and other customer responses for submission to customer.
• As directed, submit the response to customer as instructed in their instructions (email, hard copy, customer electronic procurement site, etc.)
• Oversee graphic designers to conceptualize, develop, and integrate compelling proposal graphics that convey concepts and proposed solutions to enhance proposal documents.
• Provide oversight in organizing general proposal files, resources, and boilerplate for quick, efficient and accurate retrieval of information for proposal purposes.
• Develop and/or compile sales, marketing, and technical information for proposal use.
• Final oversight of customer responses (proposals, pre-qualifications, requests for information, and presentations) as appropriate to ensure quality, compliance and best practice incorporation
• Where required within the business, manage proposal budgets and monitor proposal spend
• Assist in the maintenance of CRM opportunities during the proposal stage.
• This includes updating Pursuit Status, Revenue, Workhours, Work split, Lead Review date, Approval to Prepare date and Approval to Submit date. Some businesses may require this role to be more involved in the overall CRM reporting for the respective business.
• Comply with Wood Code of Business Conduct, Anti Bribery and Corruption undertakings and the Wood mandatory and fundamental procedures.

Skills / Qualifications
Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s Degree from an accredited university required in Business, Marketing, Communications, Journalism, or related majors preferred.
• Minimum Eight (8) years proposal experience with similar firms preferred

Knowledge, skills and experience:

• Technical and/or engineering experience preferred but not required
• Thorough understanding of and ability to implement industry best practices and Proposals/Marketing techniques
• Industry experience related to the supporting business is preferred but not required.
• Possess and ability to apply extensive management skills and knowledge in field of specialization/expertise, in order to ensure functional area performs as expected and in compliance with both internal and external policies, laws, etc.
• Ability to manage projects, interface with customer representatives, interpret customer/stakeholder requirements, manage customer/stakeholder expectations, plan workload, organize proposals team resources and deliver on agreed deadlines.
• Strong proofreading, editing and business software skills (style, format, grammar, etc.)
• Excellent knowledge of Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Adobe Acrobat; Proficiency with SharePoint and InDesign is desired.