How CPCS helps rail clients win bids: 5 timeless principles that deliver results

Jonathan Barwick

December 8, 2025

Rail bidding and tender support is both art and strategy. After years advising rail clients, CPCS transport advisor and rail industry expert Jonathan Barwick shares part of his bidding playbook that delivers results for our clients.

1. Prepare early and anticipate

Start the work before procurement documents are released, especially for important pursuits. Prepare with well-reasoned thinking, submission roadmaps and a fully formed team.

It’s always tempting to wait for official documents to be released to avoid incurring early or potentially unnecessary costs. However, if the procurement documents contain surprises, it’s much easier to pivot from your prepared position than start from scratch with a blank sheet of paper.

2. Understand the questions you’re answering

A cursory scan of submission requirements and plan titles can easily mislead you into thinking, “I’ve done this before.” You probably have, but does this client want what you’ve done before? Have they asked the exact same question that you previously answered and if so, can your previous response not be improved?

Sometimes you don’t fully understand the question until you try and answer it. Don’t assume you know – unpack the question and put in the effort to understand early in the process.

3. Ask tough questions, challenge assumptions

Not all parts of a submission will progress at the same rate. Sometimes this is inevitable due to dependencies, or because some sections are just harder and need more input. A submission RAG status (red/amber/green) showing lots of healthy greens, a few ambers and one or two reds can create a false sense of security, leading you to believe most things are on track and the red items will be sorted soon.

This may or may not be true so take the time to be sure. Otherwise, you could be leaving a serious problem too late in the process to fix properly. Be demanding by challenging assumptions, asking tough questions and addressing issues before they become critical.

4. The Vic Principle: Getting the right people doing the right tasks

I started my working life in waste management and vividly remember trying to get Vic, a former debt collector and one of my skip drivers, to go out on an extra job after he had finished his scheduled work early. Frankly, I was making heavy weather of getting this enormous and difficult individual to comply. We stood in the yard negotiating until he looked down at me and said: “What you’ve got to remember son, is that workers work, managers manage and Fred Astaire dances!” With that, he left and did the extra job.

Vic’s homespun wisdom has stayed with me: get the right people doing the right tasks – the tasks you need them to do and the tasks they’re good at.

Authoring the submission is where this really comes in to focus. Some experts are brilliant writers with a powerful ability to articulate their knowledge and experience. But if that expert isn’t the best person to author the submission, pair them with a bid writer who can extract the technical information from them to produce a compelling response. The same is true in reverse; don’t expect a bid writer to author technical documents without support from an expert.

5. Have a trusted team

Bidding is a high pressure, high stress, high stakes activity. It’s important to trust the team and for the team to trust each other. Not trusting the team becomes another unwanted and unnecessary point of stress, sapping energy and attention that should be going into the submission. Teams with mutual trust look after each other and deliver great results.

About CPCS

CPCS is a global leader in rail infrastructure advisory with over 30 years of experience helping clients win competitive bids and deliver complex projects. We provide end-to-end bid support services for private sector clients across the full lifecycle of rail bidding and project delivery.

Our private clients include:

Rolling stock and systems manufacturers
Passenger train operators
Systems and infrastructure providers

Rail expertise

Our team operates worldwide, with subject matter experts averaging 25+ years in rail and experience of leading dozens of major transport projects. CPCS combines deep knowledge in bid strategy, engineering, procurement law and financial modelling to craft proposals that are innovative, compliant and commercially robust.

We’ve pioneered the integration of inclusive design and social value models into bid submissions—helping clients achieve successful outcomes and contract awards.

Advisory services

Bid Augmentation Services

Solution development
Innovation sourcing
Partner coordination
Bid production and authoring

End-to-End Bid Support

Evaluation criteria analysis
Competitor tracking
Win theme development
Scenario modeling
Technical subject matter input

Bid Management

Coordination and planning
Requirements management
Risk tracking and governance
Structured reviews
Logistics

CPCS: Better infrastructure solutions. Better lives.