We supported our client with their tender responses for the £315 million Warwickshire County Council Highways Term Maintenance Contract, delivered through a joint procurement with Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council and Coventry City Council.
With the option to extend the contract term from seven years to a total of 13, the contract’s total value is £900m.
The opportunity
The scope of this contract focused on a wide range of highways maintenance and improvement services for all three Councils across an over 5000km road network. The services included planned, cyclical and winter maintenance, with the aim to provide safe, reliable and sustainable roads across Warwickshire, Solihull, and Coventry.
EiB approach and involvement
We supported the client through both the outline solution and final submission stages, providing strategic bid direction and expert writing. We provided a ‘critical friend’ role throughout, supported two of our writers during the procurement stages. Driven by previous experience of complex infrastructure projects, we reviewed the written responses, offering strategic challenge to ensure our client’s win themes were embedded. This reinforced their strongest selling points whilst aligning with all necessary compliance points – which was a key part of the evaluation criteria.
Our writers collaborated closely with the client’s in-house team of writers, regularly co-locating, to understand, assimilate, and convey their story through both procurement stages. One of the unique challenges in this bid was addressing the priorities of the three separate councils – Warwickshire, Solihull, and Coventry. The initial submission carried a shared page limit across multiple questions, with no specific allocation per question. We worked with our client to continuously to monitor, challenge, and review this page count across the submission.
During the final submission stage, the unlimited page count required careful planning to ensure each response was tailored to the contract’s requirements. We worked closely with our client to explain their solution and proven track record in sufficient detail, whilst maintaining a concise writing style to clearly demonstrate the benefits of their approach.
Success and outcomes
News of our client as the successful bidder was announced in early 2026, in readiness for the contract to commence in Spring 2026.