Winning a public-sector contract is only worthwhile if you can deliver it successfully and profitably.
That's why HCB Consultancy clients can now benefit from MobiliseHQ — our pre-contract planning, pricing and mobilisation platform designed to turn tender specifications into practical delivery models.
Rather than simply completing a tender response and asking the contractor to work out the pricing, MobiliseHQ allows HCB Consultancy to work with the contractor to understand what the contract could actually require from their business — from staffing and labour costs to equipment, management, TUPE, mobilisation, risk and margin.
The objective: build a tender that is not only capable of winning, but capable of being delivered.
Public-sector procurement packs can contain specifications, pricing schedules, property/site information, TUPE information, clarification responses and contractual requirements. MobiliseHQ helps structure this information into a pre-contract delivery model. Depending on the opportunity, HCB Consultancy and the contractor can assess:
Service locations and requirements
Tasks and frequencies
Labour hours and productivity
Staffing structure
TUPE workforce and employment-cost exposure
Additional recruitment requirements
Wages and employment on-costs
Management and supervision
Equipment and machinery
Materials and consumables
Vehicles and travel
Mobilisation requirements
Contingency and commercial risk
Overheads
Target margin
Relationship between contract value, cost of delivery and potential profitability
The model is tailored to the individual procurement — not every tender requires every modelling component.
A tender price shouldn't be a number you arrive at and then hope works. MobiliseHQ helps us build the delivery model first — and use that model to inform the tender, pricing and mobilisation plan.
The risk: You may know what you're bidding, without really knowing what it will take to deliver.
The tender price becomes the output of the delivery model — not the starting point.
What does the contract actually require?
Tasks, frequencies, sites and service volumes
Labour and productivity modelling
Existing workforce, TUPE, recruitment and management
Employment costs + equipment + materials + management + other delivery costs
Risk + overhead + contingency + margin + commercial judgement
Tender responses and mobilisation built around the model
Tender Writing tells the buyer how you will deliver.
MobiliseHQ helps work out how you will actually deliver.
HCB Consultancy combines the two.
Labour-intensive contracts can be particularly sensitive to small differences in productivity and staffing assumptions. MobiliseHQ allows HCB and the contractor to progressively build the labour model using the contractor's own operational knowledge and assumptions.
What needs doing
How often
How long it takes
Labour hours required
Workforce required
Employment cost
The labour model is built around the contractor's actual operational knowledge — the tasks, frequencies and durations they recognise from running similar services — so the model reflects how the work is really delivered, not a generic assumption.
As each assumption is entered, MobiliseHQ rolls the labour hours up into a workforce requirement and employment cost, giving a clear picture of the staffing needed to deliver the specification.
Where TUPE applies, MobiliseHQ can incorporate Employee Liability Information into the pre-contract model and help assess potential employment-cost exposure.
Existing TUPE Workforce
Contractual Hours
Employment Costs
Proposed Service Requirement
Potential Additional Workforce / Surplus Capacity
MobiliseHQ supports commercial modelling of potential employment-cost exposure. It does not provide legal advice and does not determine whether TUPE applies or the extent of any TUPE liability. Legal advice on TUPE should be taken separately where required.
MobiliseHQ brings the principal cost categories together so the full cost of delivery can be understood. Overheads, contingency/risk and profit can then be considered separately.
The buyer's published or estimated contract value — a commercial benchmark for the opportunity, not guaranteed revenue.
The full modelled cost of delivering the contract — labour, management, equipment, materials, vehicles and mobilisation.
Contingency and risk allowance, considered separately from the day-to-day delivery cost.
The commercial return indicated after modelled delivery costs, overheads and risk have been considered.
Tender pricing does not normally arrive fully formed on day one. MobiliseHQ allows HCB and the contractor to build a working commercial model while information is still being gathered.
Where information is incomplete, the platform can distinguish between areas that have been modelled and those still awaiting information — rather than treating missing information as zero cost.
Labour requirements
Staffing gaps
TUPE exposure
Incomplete cost categories
Contractor information requirements
Budget pressure
Commercial risk
The delivery model developed during pre-contract planning can provide a stronger factual basis for written responses. Instead of relying solely on generic method statements, HCB can write responses around the delivery approach that has actually been developed with the contractor.
Service Delivery
Staffing
Mobilisation
TUPE
Quality Assurance
Contract Management
Business Continuity
Risk
Social Value
Implementation
The work undertaken in MobiliseHQ does not have to end when the tender is submitted. If the contract is awarded, the staffing assumptions, service requirements, risks, equipment requirements, management arrangements and mobilisation commitments developed during the bid can provide the foundations for mobilisation.
Tender
Award
Mobilisation
Delivery
HCB Consultancy's existing Contract Mobilisation service can carry the model developed during the bid straight into implementation — management systems, KPI reporting, mobilisation tasks and site readiness.
For many tenders, MobiliseHQ pre-contract modelling is included within our fixed-fee tender support package.
You bring the operational knowledge of your business. We bring the tender expertise, structure and modelling tools to turn it into a credible bid.
Money Back Guarantee. We stand behind every submission with a guarantee that reflects our confidence in the quality of our work.
Depending on the procurement, support can include:
A specialist window cleaning contractor identified an opportunity to bid for LiveWest's Window and Communal Cleaning contract across the South West.
The opportunity has an estimated total value of £4.25 million, with an initial two-year contract period and the potential for three further 12-month extensions.
For a specialist SME, the scale of the opportunity presented an immediate commercial challenge. The contractor had the capability and experience to deliver the window cleaning element but did not intend to directly employ the workforce required to undertake every service within the specification.
A viable delivery model therefore needed to combine:
Window Cleaning
Lead contractor delivery
Communal Cleaning
Subcontracted delivery
Bio / Specialist Cleaning
Reactive or unit-priced delivery
The challenge was not simply identifying subcontractors. The lead contractor needed to understand the complete LiveWest requirement, establish the labour requirement for each workstream, incorporate subcontractor costs, add its own management and commercial costs, and ultimately arrive at a defensible contract price.
MobiliseHQ converted the LiveWest procurement information into one structured contract workspace. Rather than treating the tender as one enormous cleaning specification, the platform separated the requirement into distinct operational workstreams:
Window Cleaning
Lead contractor delivery
Communal Cleaning
Subcontracted delivery
Bio / Specialist Cleaning
Reactive or unit-priced delivery
This allows each organisation involved in delivering the contract to contribute to the part of the pricing model it understands, without requiring one person to estimate every element of the contract.
The LiveWest pricing information contained hundreds of individual property/service relationships. MobiliseHQ imported, reconciled and validated the schedules and created:
351
physical contract properties
332
Communal Cleaning property/service relationships
252
Window Cleaning property/service relationships
Across those properties, the platform identified active property/service relationships and the imported schedules generate:
13,676
scheduled Communal Cleaning visits / year
1,512
scheduled Window Cleaning visits / year
Bio Cleaning is maintained separately because it is a reactive/unit-priced service rather than a predictable scheduled workload. This transforms a large property spreadsheet into an operational delivery model.
The lead window cleaning contractor does not need to price hundreds of properties individually. MobiliseHQ asks for two core operational assumptions:
Assumption 1
Typical visit duration
Assumption 2
Number of operatives
The calculation is then:
Visit Duration × Number of Operatives = Person-Hours per Visit
For example, if the contractor determines that a typical visit requires 2 operatives × 1.5 hours = 3 person-hours, MobiliseHQ can apply that assumption across the 1,512 scheduled annual Window Cleaning visits.
The £20 hourly cost in this example is illustrative rather than an actual LiveWest tender assumption. The contractor can then override individual properties where access, building configuration or other known circumstances mean that the standard visit assumption is inappropriate. This provides a baseline without requiring the contractor to manually price all 252 Window Cleaning property relationships.
Communal Cleaning can be modelled independently. Rather than asking the window cleaning contractor to estimate work outside its specialist area, the communal cleaning subcontractor provides its own operational assumptions.
Typical visit duration × Cleaning operatives × Scheduled visits
If, purely for illustration, the average communal visit required 1 operative × 1.25 hours = 1.25 person-hours, applied to the 13,676 scheduled annual Communal Cleaning visits:
The subcontractor can refine the model where particular properties require different labour assumptions. The important distinction is that the specialist cleaning contractor contributes the operational knowledge required to calculate the Communal Cleaning workload, while the lead contractor retains control of the overall commercial model.
Labour cost is not necessarily the price charged by the subcontractor. The communal cleaning company may need to include supervision and management; equipment and materials; travel; holiday and absence cover; insurance and compliance costs; overhead recovery; and profit.
MobiliseHQ can therefore distinguish between the underlying operational cost and the commercial amount that needs to be incorporated into the lead contractor's tender price.
Bio Cleaning presents a different pricing problem. It is reactive and cannot necessarily be forecast using a fixed annual visit schedule. Rather than forcing it into the same labour model, MobiliseHQ allows the workstream to be priced using appropriate units such as:
This means different types of service can sit within the same contract model without being forced into the same pricing methodology.
Once each workstream has been calculated, MobiliseHQ can bring the costs together.
The lead contractor then needs to consider the costs associated with managing the overall LiveWest contract. For illustration:
The lead contractor can then determine the commercial margin required. For example, applying a 10% margin to cost would produce:
Again, these figures are illustrative. MobiliseHQ's purpose is not to decide what a contractor should charge; it provides the structure through which the contractor can test its own assumptions.
One of the most important benefits of the model is the ability to see what happens when an assumption changes.
From
"What figure should we put in the pricing schedule?"
Towards
"What will this contract actually cost us to deliver, and what price produces an acceptable commercial return?"
A subcontractor's contribution does not mean that every organisation involved needs access to the complete commercial picture. The model can separate:
This is particularly important where an SME is assembling a delivery partnership to compete for a contract larger than it could comfortably deliver alone. The window cleaning contractor can retain ownership of the LiveWest bid and commercial strategy while drawing on specialist partners for the services they are best equipped to deliver.
For LiveWest, MobiliseHQ creates a clear commercial chain:
A complex multi-service tender can be transformed into a structured commercial delivery model. Instead of requiring one SME to possess every capability internally, MobiliseHQ supports a lead-contractor model in which specialist businesses contribute to individual workstreams while the bidding organisation retains control of the overall contract.
The lead contractor can understand:
Large public-sector contracts can appear inaccessible to smaller specialist contractors because the specification often combines several different services into one procurement. But the ability to deliver every service directly is not necessarily the same as the ability to manage the delivery of the contract.
MobiliseHQ provides the commercial and operational structure needed to bring multiple specialist organisations together. For a contractor considering an opportunity such as LiveWest, the question changes from:
From
"Are we big enough to deliver all of this ourselves?"
To
"Can we build, cost and manage the right delivery model?"
That opens a very different category of public-sector opportunity to ambitious SMEs. MobiliseHQ turns complex tender requirements into a measurable delivery model — from specification, through labour and subcontracting, to a commercially defensible tender price.
The Royal Armouries cleaning services opportunity at Fort Nelson presented the type of challenge that contractors regularly encounter when bidding for public-sector cleaning contracts.
Estimated total value
£450,000
excluding VAT
Initial 3-year period
£270,000
approx.
2-year extension
£180,000
potential
At first glance, the opportunity appeared relatively straightforward: provide cleaning services to a major visitor attraction. The underlying specification told a very different story. It contained hundreds of individual cleaning requirements covering different areas of the site, different activities and significantly different service frequencies.
For a contractor preparing a price, the challenge was not simply:
Not
"How much should we charge?"
But
"What exactly are we being asked to deliver, how often must we deliver it, how much labour will it require, and what will it actually cost?"
The Fort Nelson specification contained 219 individual service requirements. Those requirements covered everything from frequently repeated cleaning activities through to periodic and as-required tasks. MobiliseHQ identified 214 unique Service Area + Task + Frequency combinations, while retaining all 219 source requirements. Nothing from the original specification was discarded.
The frequency analysis identified:
106
Daily
7
Hourly
33
Weekly
10
Monthly
29
Biannual
30
Annual
4
As Required
This immediately demonstrated why simply looking at the number of specification lines would not provide a meaningful basis for pricing. A task undertaken once a year has a completely different labour implication from a task undertaken every day.
MobiliseHQ transformed the cleaning specification into a structured operational model. Instead of treating the tender document as a long list of cleaning instructions, each requirement could be understood in terms of:
This creates the bridge between the procurement specification and the contractor's commercial pricing model.
One of the most important stages is converting written frequencies into measurable occurrences. For example, MobiliseHQ identified 362 daily occurrences per year within the Fort Nelson service model. That allows the contractor to move beyond statements such as:
From
"This task must be completed daily."
To
"How many times will we actually have to perform it during the contract year?"
The same principle can then be applied across weekly, monthly, biannual and annual requirements. This creates a measurable annual workload rather than a collection of written instructions.
Once the frequency has been established, the contractor can apply its own operational knowledge. For each activity, the contractor can determine how long the activity will take and how many operatives are required.
Occurrences × Duration × Number of Operatives = Annual Person-Hours
For example, if an activity occurs 362 times per year, takes 30 minutes and requires one operative:
This is where MobiliseHQ begins converting a tender specification into a genuine delivery model. The same calculation can be repeated across the specification to aggregate daily, weekly, monthly and annual labour requirements — and ultimately total contract labour hours.
A small error in the assumed time for a frequently repeated activity can become a significant commercial error when multiplied across an entire year — and potentially across a five-year contract.
The Fort Nelson opportunity also demonstrates why pricing cannot simply be based on the existing workforce. Where TUPE applies, information about transferring employees is extremely important. But TUPE data answers one question — "What workforce may transfer to the incoming contractor?" — it does not necessarily answer "What workforce is actually required to deliver the new specification?"
MobiliseHQ allows the contractor to build the workload requirement from the specification first. The resulting labour requirement can then be compared against the TUPE information. This can help identify whether:
This turns TUPE from something that is simply accepted as a tender cost into something that can be tested against the actual service requirement.
A viable tender price cannot be calculated from wages alone. Once the operational workload has been established, the contractor also needs to consider the wider cost of delivering the Fort Nelson contract:
MobiliseHQ provides a structure for bringing these costs together rather than allowing them to remain disconnected across spreadsheets, tender documents and individual calculations.
Once labour and additional operating costs have been established, the contractor can calculate the estimated annual cost of delivering the contract. The commercial process then becomes:
The contractor can then apply its required commercial margin. For example:
The figures above are illustrative. The purpose is not for MobiliseHQ to determine what the contractor should charge — its purpose is to allow the contractor to understand what its own assumptions mean commercially.
This is where the model becomes particularly valuable before a bid is submitted. Suppose the contractor's detailed operational model produced an annual cost of £95,000 before profit. If the authority's indicative annual budget was approximately £90,000, that would immediately raise an important question.
The contractor could investigate:
That is a far better position than discovering after winning the contract that the price submitted cannot support the required service.
The reverse is equally important. A contractor might initially believe it needs to bid £90,000 per year simply because that appears to be the authority's anticipated budget. But its detailed MobiliseHQ model might demonstrate that the contract can be delivered properly for £72,000. If the contractor automatically reduces its tender price to £75,000 in an attempt to be competitive, it could unnecessarily give away a substantial amount of potential margin.
MobiliseHQ therefore helps answer two different questions:
Question 1
What will the contract cost us to deliver?
Question 2
What should our commercial tender price be?
Those are not necessarily the same number.
The Fort Nelson model also creates something that is often missing from tender pricing: a clear explanation of how the price was reached. Instead of a final figure sitting at the bottom of a spreadsheet with little connection to the specification, the contractor can trace the commercial logic:
This provides a much stronger foundation for internal approval, pricing discussions and mobilisation if the contract is subsequently won.
The value of the model does not necessarily end when the tender is submitted. If the contractor wins Fort Nelson, much of the information required for mobilisation has already been structured. The contractor already has visibility of:
The tender pricing exercise therefore becomes the starting point for operational mobilisation rather than a spreadsheet that is forgotten once the procurement process ends.
Fort Nelson demonstrates how MobiliseHQ can transform a complex cleaning specification containing 219 individual requirements into a structured commercial model. The contractor moves from:
Most importantly, zero specification requirements are lost during that process.
Public-sector tender pricing often begins with an authority's pricing schedule and ends with a contractor trying to decide what number to enter into it. MobiliseHQ approaches the problem from the opposite direction. It asks:
Only then does it arrive at the tender price. That changes pricing from an educated guess into a structured commercial decision.
Specification → Frequency → Workload → Labour → Additional Costs → Contract Price
MobiliseHQ turns complex tender specifications into measurable, costed delivery plans — helping contractors understand the contract before they price it.
Before deciding what to charge, let's understand what it could actually take to deliver. Send HCB the tender information or arrange a call to discuss the opportunity.