Maximising success for work-winning teams

Contact

Jamie Hillier
07791 718 377
Jamie.Hillier@akerlof.co.uk
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Overview

Akerlof supports work-winning teams to craft high quality bids across multiple sectors, including defence, healthcare, custodial, science and infrastructure for both public and private sector clients.

Our expertise is broad, providing technical and strategic support across all areas, which is complemented by our in-depth understanding of Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) principles.

Our team brings extensive experience, with many of our colleagues having honed their skills working within preconstruction for the UK’s largest regional contractors. This capability enables us to construct bid responses that are not only competitive but also effectively showcase our clients’ strengths, helping them stand out in the marketplace.

What we did

Developed for success, our refined approach is tailored to each client’s needs, offering structured bid response templates and facilitating answer planning sessions to enhance message clarity and impact.

Collaborating closely with subject matter experts, we work to understand our client’s differentiators across all areas, from digital integration and risk to social value and sustainability. Our support extends to graphic design, ensuring visually compelling bids that earn crucial work-winning points across diverse tenders.

Our cutting-edge industry insights ensure bids are fully aligned to local, regional and national policies, as well as wider framework and programme aims, such as the New Hospitals Programme (NHP) and New Prisons Programme (NPP).

The impact

Our contributions significantly enhance bid competitiveness, demonstrated in the following project-specific outcomes:

  • Led the development of a detailed sustainability action plan for the Ministry of Justice’s £2bn New Prison’s Programme, resulting in a 100% score, securing the top position among four bidders
  • Supported a tier 1 contractor to secure a blue light scheme for a business unit that had not previously bid within the sector
  • Developed a detailed Social Value Plan as part of a successful bid for HMP Glasgow, fully aligned to the Scottish Government’s national outcomes
  • Crafted a leading MMC solution that led a tier 1 contractor to win a £300m hospital project, fully aligned to the New Hospitals Programme aims
  • Led two consortium teams to successfully win Innovate UK projects to decarbonise construction products and processes
  • Assisted a Joint Venture to be appointed to all Lots applied on the CCS £10bn Offsite Construction Solutions framework

Don't just take our word for it

Akerlof has been excellent on our tender and has supported throughout. They really added value in the answer planning sessions, helping the team consider how our response could be approached and developed to be more powerful, with clear messages. We found the use of the Akerlof templates a real benefit within our answer planning sessions.

Nick Cook, Education and Civic Sector Lead, Kier

Jamie Hillier

Partner
Contact
Linkedin Twitter
jamie.hillier@akerlof.co.uk
07791 718 377

With a penchant for tweed and jackets with leather arm patches, Jamie began his career as a quantity surveyor, before climbing the ladder to lead major projects for a Tier 1 contractor.

Eventually expanding his book collection beyond copies of SMM7, Jamie has interest in a broad range of subjects linked to delivering better outcomes for society and the environment.

His strategic insights on MMC and behavioural science have made their way into numerous government, industry and academic publications, including the Construction Playbook, Transforming Infrastructure Performance Roadmap to 2030, the Platform Rulebook and the RIBA DfMA Overlay.

John Handscomb

Partner
Contact
Linkedin Twitter
john.handscomb@akerlof.co.uk
07305 486 581

Construction is in John’s blood. Learning from his father who was a planner and project manager, John began his career by working on some iconic projects in both the public and private sector.

As a procurement expert and integrator of new ways of working, John has pioneered the integration of platform principles, DfMA processes and supply chain within over £5bn projects in the last 15 years, for some of the largest building programmes in the UK. Despite his considerable expertise, John keeps it simple, communicating complicated ideas with ease and helping to equip the industry with new knowledge and skills.

Outside of Akerlof, John enjoys his executive role with technology start-up ScanTech Digital, spending time with his family, taking trips down the football, playing a bit of golf with friends and the odd pint. 

Our name is shared with George Akerlof, a Nobel Prize-winning economist.

His seminal paper, Market for Lemons, demonstrated the devastating consequences of making decisions under the conditions of quality uncertainty and unequal information between buyers and sellers, increasing the chance of buyers ending up with a ‘lemon’.

This 50-year-old concept continues to retain parallels within the construction industry.

Through our insight and experience, we can rebalance this information asymmetry on behalf of our clients, levelling the playing field to deliver better outcomes.