Manufacturing Bid Lead

Click Digital; Bolton; On-site; GBP 40,000 - 80,000; Full time

Job description

We are recruiting for a Manufacturing Bid Lead for a leading defence organisation based in Bolton.
This is a hybrid role with 2 days a week on site, 3 days WFH. Ideally, you will have SC Clearance; if not, you must be eligible to obtain it.

Role Purpose:

Bid lead on behalf of manufacturing, ensuring clarity of scope within Bid Directive and content aligns with manufacturing industrial policy. Responsibilities include:

1. Generating a cost base for manufacturing bids (Excel), analysing data to ensure it is quantifiable and has evidence-backed data for 3-point estimating.
2. Generating manufacturing bids (PowerPoint), ensuring they are competitive, compliant, and align with all business and commercial criteria. All risks must be assessed effectively, and bids should be financially sound and competitive.
3. Ensuring Manufacturing provides value-added contributions to the bid directive.
4. Developing and maintaining a strong and collaborative working relationship with all key stakeholders, providing Manufacturing with forward visibility of future bids and market intelligence (Skype / F2F - regular catch-up meetings).
5. Ensuring Manufacturing is a key stakeholder in the generation of bid data throughout the Life Cycle of the Project/Product and is adequately prepared to manage and deliver competitive and compliant bid proposals.
6. Generating awareness of the Manufacturing Bid Team across all Programmes.
7. Supporting the New Business Team in the identification of new business opportunities and the development of approaches to winning the business.
8. Actively participating in Functional & Strategic Change activities, supporting best practice & functional excellence.
9. Participating fully in developing, maintaining, and modifying manufacturing processes and procedures in assigned areas in accordance with relevant standards, best practices, and developing needs. Keen to adopt a continuous improvement attitude.
10. Supporting the continued validation and evolution of the cost model and bidding methodology within manufacturing to ensure competitiveness checks are in place on all bids (Excel). Ensuring costs reflect the latest assumptions, including Unit Production Cost (UPC) using actual cost data where possible and engineering estimates where not.
11. Collecting, summarising, and presenting information or data, carrying out pre-defined analyses, ensuring completeness and accuracy, and providing it to others for use in decision-making. Challenging data and information provided to ensure the Bid Pack is clear and fully auditable back to the data source.
12. Ensuring effective process governance in assigned areas, ensuring projects adhere to all policies and procedures, promoting a culture of best practice sharing and knowledge exploitation, and contributing to relevant overall bidding activities.

Experience:

Experience working on complex bids is advantageous, with a proven record of accomplishment in the generation of costed proposals/manufacturing bids. Preferred experience includes:

1. Experience within an engineering or production environment.
2. A good understanding of the manufacturing production process, from procurement through to delivery.
3. Commercial acumen, working with cost models to generate costings for direct/indirect costs, materials, and other costs associated with manufacturing products.
4. Strong presentation skills, as bid packs/cost brochures are generated using PowerPoint and presented to the Senior Management Team for approval.
5. Excellent communication skills, as the Bid Team works across all programmes, necessitating the creation of networks and strong relationships within multi-functional teams.
6. Ability to work unsupervised and as part of a team, with a proactive approach.
7. Ability to articulate theory applied to a costing approach and ensure evidence is collated for audit purposes.
8. Experience of lessons learned for ongoing continuous improvements in the bidding process.
9. Ability to work to tight deadlines across multiple bids.
10. Logical thinking, with experience in data analytics and reporting.
11. Experience communicating at a high level, interfacing with key stakeholders to respond to complex situations and effectively influence the function and wider business.
12. An enthusiastic, proactive, and tenacious individual who can prioritise and understand strategic business needs while managing day-to-day tactical decisions.

To succeed in this role, you will be required to be decisive, consistent, and influential. This is an umbrella contract, and the role is Inside IR35.