Streamlining Irish Procurement Forms: How to Automate Appendix B3 and D1 in the SAQ

For professional services firms bidding on Irish public sector contracts, the Suitability Assessment Questionnaire (SAQ) forms—particularly the QC2 for technical services—can be both crucial and cumbersome. Two sections in particular tend to consume disproportionate amounts of time and resources: Appendix B3 (Certificate of Delivery of Services) and Appendix D1 (Curriculum Vitaes).

Understanding the SAQ appendices

Before diving into automation solutions, let's clarify what these appendices require:

Appendix B3 - Certificate of Delivery of Services: This section requires detailed information about past projects relevant to the current bid. For each reference project, you must provide comprehensive information including project descriptions, values, timelines, roles, and specific services provided. This serves as evidence of your firm's capability to deliver similar work.

Appendix D1 - Curriculum Vitaes: This section demands standardized CVs for key personnel who will work on the project. These must showcase relevant qualifications, experience, and capabilities that align with project requirements. The format is often rigid and requires specific information presented in a particular way.

Streamlining SAQ completion

Let's be honest – no one enjoys completing these appendices. The process is incredibly time-consuming, with proposal teams needing to copy and paste data from one system to another, over and over again for each person and project. This manual approach not only wastes valuable time but also introduces significant risk of errors and inconsistencies.

Luckily, Flowcase was built specifically to eliminate these pain points. Our platform centralizes your team's CV and project data in a structured, searchable database that can be instantly exported to match exact procurement requirements – turning days of work into minutes. 

How to automate Appendix D1

Let's see how Flowcase automates the Curriculum Vitae section in practice:

1. Template Setup: We create the Appendix D1 template for you and map the fields from your Flowcase CV database to the relevant parts of the appendix. This is a one-time setup that ensures perfect alignment with SAQ requirements.
2. Team Selection: When it's time to create your proposal, you simply select the team members that are best fit for the role, using Flowcase's searchable CV database. Filter by skills, certifications, industries, or project types to quickly identify the ideal candidates for the bid.
3. CV Tailoring: Before export, you can easily customize each team member's CV for maximum impact. Reorder experiences to put the most relevant ones first, craft hyper-relevant project statements that resonate, and highlight particular qualifications – all without affecting the master CV data.
4. One-Click Export: When everything is ready, simply export directly to the D1 format with a single click. What would take hours of copying and pasting happens in seconds. Imagine the time savings if you have to submit 10, 20, or even 50 people – each export takes the same minimal effort regardless of volume.

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The result is perfectly formatted, consistent documents that meet all the requirements of Appendix D1.

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How to automate Appendix B3

Automating Appendix B3 follows a similar process:

1. Template Configuration: We set up the Appendix B3 template and map fields from your Flowcase project database to the corresponding sections of the appendix.
2. Project Selection: When preparing your bid, use Flowcase's powerful search and filter capabilities to identify the most relevant reference projects. Filter by sector, service type, date range, etc to find perfect examples that will resonate with evaluators.
3. Content Optimization: Before exporting, tailor your project descriptions to emphasize aspects most relevant to the current opportunity. Highlight specific outcomes, adjust terminology to match procurement language, or focus on particular service elements without altering your master project records.
4. Instant Export: With your projects selected and optimized, export them directly to the B3 format with a single click. Again, what would normally require hours of copying, pasting, and formatting is completed in seconds.

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A better way to bid

The Suitability Assessment Questionnaire is an essential part of most Irish public sector contracts, but it’s a time-suck of your team’s resources. With Flowcase you can forgo this manual work, improve data quality, reduce errors, and enable your team to focus on what truly differentiates your bid.

Book a demo today to see how Flowcase can help your firm.