For the answer you've been putting off
How to write a method statement that scores
The box is open, the criterion is at the top of it, and the cursor has been blinking for twenty minutes. What goes in there is a promise about how you would run the work, and it is marked on whether a stranger can believe it.
Or call 07984 845440, or email [email protected].
Start with the criterion, not with the blank page
Copy the criterion and its weighting, the share of the marks it carries, to the top of the page and leave them there. Every paragraph you write gets held against them, and how the answer is scored is worth reading first.
If the criterion asks about mobilisation, which is how you would get the work up and running, and your draft is about your company's history, the draft is not weak. It is answering a question nobody asked.
What the box is actually asking for
A method statement is a written answer setting out how you would deliver a specific requirement, who would do it, when, and how you and the buyer would know it was working. It is scored against a published criterion like any other quality answer. The difference is that it is about the future, so everything it claims has to be anchored in something you can already show.
A shape that covers the criterion
The ones that score well tend to cover the same ground, in whatever order the criterion implies.
- What you'd actually do, in steps a reader can picture, with the sequence and the dependencies.
- Who does it, by role, with the named person where the buyer has asked for one and the cover arrangement where they haven't.
- When, against the buyer's own dates rather than a generic timeline of your own.
- How you'd know it was working, with the measure, the frequency and who sees it.
- What happens when it goes wrong, with the trigger, the escalation and the recovery, because every evaluator knows something will.
- What the buyer has to do, stated plainly, because an answer that quietly assumes their effort is a risk they can see.
What is missing is usually what happens when it goes wrong.
Evidence beats adjectives
"Robust", "seamless" and "proven" are adjectives, and each one is a claim the reader has to take on trust.
Swap each for the thing that made you write it. Instead of a robust handover, name the document, who signs it, how long it takes and what happens if it isn't signed. The government's own guidance asks for measurable outcomes and buyer-specific benefits, and that is the same instruction said from the buyer's side. Having the whole set written for you is the other way to close it.
The test to run on every paragraph
Could a competitor put their own name on this sentence and have it still be true? If they could, it is not evidence about you, and it will not carry a mark.
Count it yourself, in their unit
Word and character limits are compliance, not guidance, and the tender compliance checklist carries the rest of them. Write long, cut to the limit, and count the way the buyer counts rather than the way your word processor does.
Cutting is where method statements improve, and the paragraph about your own organisation is usually the first thing that can go.
The reuse trap
Last year's winning answer was written against a different criterion, for a different buyer, with a different weighting, which is what makes it the likeliest one to score badly.
Government guidance to suppliers says it directly: avoid submitting previously successful or generic tender responses, and tailor your answers to the organisation. Reuse the evidence, and write the answer again.
Before it goes
- Read each method statement beside its own criterion, with the weighting visible, and mark it yourself out of the scale the buyer published.
- Name the evidence behind every claim. If you can't, either find it or drop the claim.
- Check that anything the statement promises is something the people who'd deliver it have actually agreed to.
- Give it to somebody who didn't write it and ask them to mark it cold.
That last step is the one the deadline eats. A fixed-fee review does it against the published criteria and names the weakest answers with the fix.
The cold read is the one you cannot do yourself
Send whatever is drafted with the tender documents, and the fee for finishing it comes back with it.
Or call 07984 845440, or email [email protected].