Behind Every Contract Win: Meet DMA’s Bid Manager, Tanya Ewart
When a new maintenance contract starts, the people you see are the engineers on site and the account team on the phone. What you don’t see is the work that won the contract in the first place.
At DMA, much of that work sits with Tanya Ewart, our Bid Manager. Tanya has been with DMA for eight years and has worked in bids for ten. Her role isn’t customer-facing, and most of the people who benefit from her work will never meet her. But every new contract we deliver started on her desk.
What does a bid manager do?
A bid manager leads the process of winning new contracts, from helping the business decide whether to bid through to submitting the final response.
“If someone asks what I do, I tell them I help DMA win new work,” Tanya says. “The writing is the bit people picture, but it’s only about a third of the job. Most of my time goes on planning, research and getting the right people round the table, because you can’t write a good bid until you really understand the customer and know exactly what we can deliver.”
In a large FM business, that work is often split between a bid manager, a coordinator, a writer and a designer. At DMA, most of it runs through Tanya. She shares the writing with Valerie Miller, our Chief Customer Officer, and draws in colleagues from right across the business who contribute their knowledge, evidence and ideas. Alongside that, she organises the kick-off meetings, gathers the evidence, designs the documents and graphics, handles questions from the buyer, keeps the sign-off process on track and makes the final submission. She sometimes helps prepare the presentation too.
In practice, she’s the gatekeeper. Nothing goes to a prospective customer without passing through her.
Why the role matters
A bid is where a contract’s promises are made. The response times, reporting and service a customer reads in our bid are what our teams will be measured against once the work begins. So Tanya’s job isn’t only to write a strong response. It’s to make sure every promise in it is one DMA can keep.
That’s why she brings the operations, finance, mobilisation and commercial teams together before anything is written, to agree exactly what we can commit to. It’s also why DMA doesn’t bid for everything. “Before we commit to a bid, we review the commercial requirements and check the contract is viable for us,” Tanya says. “We make sure we can meet all the mandatory requirements, and that we can genuinely deliver it from an operational point of view.”
Once the decision is made to go ahead, every bid is written for one customer. “You can’t stand apart if everyone says the same things,” she says. “We’re not writing an advert, or an article selling generalised services.” Every claim is backed by something real, whether that’s data from BiO®, our service management platform, or the words of a current customer.
Very few people at DMA see the whole of a bid from start to finish. Tanya does. After eight years here, she also knows the people, the history and what the business can genuinely deliver, so she knows who to ask and when to push back. That’s why a role that sits behind the scenes is so central to how DMA grows.
The highs and the lows
Not every bid is a win, and those are the hard ones. “When you’ve put a lot of time and effort in, and have touched everyone from across the business, and know we could really help, and we don’t win it, it’s hard,” Tanya says.
The wins make it worth it. Within the space of a month, DMA was awarded the commercial portfolio contracts for Thurrock Council and London Borough of Sutton, against tough competition that included much bigger FM companies. “The feedback really reinforced that we’d understood the customer’s challenges and could offer genuine improvements for them,” she says.
Sometimes the recognition arrives unprompted. After DMA won a contract with London MAT, the consultant representing the trust got in touch to say our bid and presentation were excellent: “Really well presented, detailed and all to a very high standard. We thought you’d like to know.”
A job that keeps changing
When Tanya started, tender documents arrived as hard copies in the post, and responses went back the same way, printed several times over. “Portals and emails have made the process massively easier from that point of view,” she says. “Now I sound old.”
AI is part of the picture now too, but it has a clear place. “We do use AI, but more as a supporting tool to streamline admin processes and to make sure our final bid message and solution is really clear for the customer,” Tanya says. “The actual development of the tender solution is always kept with people, getting our team around the table and discussing what the customer needs.”
What customers expect has moved on as well. Social value and carbon reduction carry far more weight than they used to. As Tanya puts it, “Customers want meaningful, realistic and achievable commitments.”
A career in FM that often gets forgotten
When people picture a career in facilities management, they tend to picture engineers and technicians on site. Conversations about women in FM often focus on the same roles, on leadership, or on customer service and account management. Bid management rarely comes up, yet without it there would be no new contracts for anyone else to deliver.
It’s a role that draws on writing, design, project management and commercial awareness, along with a real understanding of how the whole business works. Tanya’s story is a good example of the many ways women build careers in FM, often in roles that sit behind the scenes. For anyone looking for a way into FM that isn’t on the tools, it’s a route worth knowing about.
Tanya’s advice to anyone considering it is simple. “Go for it! It’s such a varied and interesting career, and no two days are the same. Every bid is different, and being awarded a contract for a bid you’ve worked so hard on is so rewarding.”
The work nobody sees
Tanya takes the job seriously, and for her the reward is knowing she’s been part of something bigger.
“Most people never see the bid. By the time a contract mobilises, the focus is on the engineers and the account team, and that’s how it should be. But I know how much went into getting there and how many people across DMA helped shape it. When we win and I see that work turn into a better service for a customer, that’s what makes it worth it.”
Planning your next tender?
Whether you’re reviewing your current maintenance contract or getting ready to go out to tender, we’d be happy to talk it through. Every bid we submit is built around the customer, shaped by the people who deliver the work, and only promises what we know we can keep. If you’d like to understand how we’d approach your buildings and what matters most to you, get in touch with our team.
