Bid Writer in Manchester

As a Bid Writer, you will be responsible for producing all technical proposals included within tender submission documents across our gas, power, telecoms, transport, water, and wastewater portfolios. Your writing will bring the Company's knowledge, experience, and delivery capability to life — turning technical detail and operational input into clear, persuasive, evidence-led narrative that scores. This is a writing-first role. You will own the craft of the response: interpreting the question, planning the answer, drafting compelling copy, and refining it through review into polished, compliant, submission-ready content.

Working within a regulated environment shaped by Ofwat, Ofgem, and industry investment cycles (AMP and RIIO), you will tailor every response to the specific client, framework, and evaluation criteria in front of you. You will be joining a dynamic and successful team that has achieved an average win rate (by value) of more than 70% over the last four years. This is a key hire for the business; vital to ensuring we achieve our vision and ambitious targets over the next five years.

• Plan, draft, and complete non-commercial (quality) submissions, ensuring a client-specific focus and alignment to the published evaluation criteria is applied to every response.
• Develop articulate, coherent, and persuasive responses that support comprehensive submissions, utilising written text, method statements, case studies, photographs, sketches, and supporting documents where applicable.
• Interpret each question, plan the answer against the marking scheme, and structure content so that it directly and fully addresses what the evaluator is scoring.
• Adopt best-practice proposal writing techniques – including win themes, storyboarding, and features-to-benefits – to maximise the scoring potential of every submission.
• Craft compelling Social Value, sustainability, carbon reduction, and community engagement narratives that respond to client and regulatory expectations.
• Work to exceed expected quality standards, complying with internal bid processes and contributing to their continuous improvement.
• Read, understand, and extract key bid requirements from client documentation (SQ/PQQ, ITT, specifications, and framework schedules), and communicate these clearly to the wider bid team.
• Interview and engage subject matter experts across operations, SHEQ, commercial, and technical delivery to gather the detail and evidence needed, then translate it into reader-friendly, benefit-led narrative.
• Review, edit, and develop draft responses provided by other members of staff into polished, consistent, submission-ready content, applying a single clear voice throughout.
• Maintain and grow a reusable content and case study library, keeping boilerplate accurate, current, and ready to tailor.
• Maintain a high level of market intelligence, including insight into wider industry best practice, competitor activity, and client/regulatory information (Ofwat/Ofgem, AMP/RIIO).
• Proactively build knowledge of the organisation's offerings and differentiators to effectively articulate solutions and communicate value to customers and stakeholders.
• Identify opportunities to improve the end-to-end bid process.
• Manage client procurement portals to ensure all requirements, deadlines, and documents are understood and applied to the bid process.
• Raise clarification questions with the Head of Bids or Bid Lead to ensure Tender Queries are captured and submitted within client deadlines.
• Support post-submission activity, including refining content for presentations, clarifications, and structured win/loss reviews to strengthen future writing.

• Exceptional written English, with a proven ability to write clear, persuasive, and grammatically flawless responses for a scored, evaluated audience.
• Experience writing tenders or technical proposals (SQ/PQQ and ITT), ideally within utilities, infrastructure, construction or traffic management sectors.
• The ability to translate technical, operational, and commercial input into engaging plain-English narrative pitched at the right level for an evaluator.
• Strong answer-planning skills – able to deconstruct a question, map the marking scheme, and structure a response that directly addresses every requirement.
• A confident editor, comfortable rewriting and elevating the drafts of others while preserving technical accuracy and consistency of tone and voice.
• Meticulous attention to detail across spelling, grammar, formatting, word counts, and compliance with question requirements.
• Awareness of best-practice proposal techniques such as win themes, storyboarding, features-to-benefits, and evidencing claims with proof points.
• Understanding of the bid lifecycle, from receipt of client documentation through to submission, clarification, and review.
• Computer literate in MS Office – Word, Excel and PowerPoint – with confidence navigating client e-procurement portals.
• Well-organised, with excellent time management and the ability to write to fixed deadlines across multiple concurrent submissions.
• Ability to develop effective relationships with technical stakeholders to obtain information and insights needed to address response requirements and articulate solutions clearly and accurately.
• Ability to work under pressure while maintaining quality.
• Self-motivated, with the ability to work independently as well as part of a collaborative bid team.

We offer a competitive salary based on experience along with a full benefits package.

Network Plus is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We celebrate diversity and do not discriminate based on race, religion, colour, nationality, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability status, or any other applicable characteristics protected by law. We are Armed Forces-friendly. We welcome applications from ex-Armed Forces personnel, reservists, armed forces veterans, cadet instructors and military spouses/partners.

We understand that privacy and the security of your personal information is extremely important. By applying for this role, you agree to the terms of our privacy policy.

Network Plus is an award-winning business delivering essential utility and infrastructure services for the UK’s major providers of gas, power, telecoms, transport, water, and wastewater. We value the variety of experience, perspective, and other points of difference our workforce, clients, and supply chain offer. We are actively working with colleagues across the Network Plus Group to develop an inclusive environment – we want all our employees to feel valued and included to enable everyone to thrive at work and understand the value of their contribution matters no matter their background, identity, or circumstances.