Write a mobilisation plan that survives award

A mobilisation plan scores, and holds after award, when every date in it is worked back from something your bid team doesn't control: the staff transfer law where the service sits, the incumbent's data and exit, and the lead times for technology and training. Where you can't yet know something, the plan states it as an assumption the contract allows instead of hiding it behind a confident Gantt chart. This is mobilisation in the services sense, the run from contract award to full service start, not moving plant onto a construction site. The sections below follow the work in order: inputs, the buyer's window and marking scheme, lead times, staff transfer, key people, assumptions, the incumbent's exit and a final check.

Before you start: the inputs and who supplies them

Gather the buyer's documents and five inputs from colleagues outside the bid team before anyone drafts, because the plan rests on facts the bid team can't supply itself. From the tender pack you need the buyer's mobilisation window, anything it says about phasing, the evaluation methodology for this question, the draft contract terms and whatever incumbent staff data the buyer has released. The mobilisation section is one part of running the whole tender response, but it leans harder than most on people who don't work in bids.

Each of these colleagues owns one input:

• HR: a review of the incumbent staff data, with its gaps listed.
• Employment legal: the staff transfer sequence under the law that applies to the service.
• Operations: sites, equipment and the method for starting the service.
• IT: lead times for systems, accounts, access and data migration.
• The future delivery lead: agreement that the dates are ones they can run.

The last one matters most. A plan the delivery lead hasn't agreed is the bid team's promise, made on someone else's behalf. These colleagues have little time to give a bid, so ask them narrow, dated questions; working with subject matter experts on tenders covers how to get usable answers from people whose day job comes first.

Read the buyer's window and marking scheme

Take the mobilisation window, any phasing requirement and the marks from this tender's own documents, because the plan is judged against those, not against a general idea of what mobilisation should look like.

Where the window comes from

The buyer sets the window when it plans the procurement. The window in the documents is the buyer's own decision about what's achievable. Treat it as the constraint your plan fits, and say so. If your lead times won't fit inside it, raise that as a clarification question or weigh it at bid/no-bid, rather than absorbing it quietly into a compressed timeline.

Proposing a phased go-live

Read the documents for any phasing requirement. Where phases are required, build your plan around them. Where the documents allow phasing and your longest lead time won't fit a single start date, propose it, and say which part of the service starts when and why.

How the section is marked

Your marks come from this tender's evaluation methodology, not from a weighting quoted for mobilisation sections in general. Write each part of the plan against the criteria and scoring descriptors for this question, as you would any scored answer. In the EU, Directive 2014/24/EU lets buyers use the organisation, qualification and experience of the staff assigned to the contract as an award criterion where staff quality can significantly affect performance. Where a tender does that, your named leads and team structure carry marks of their own.

In SEQUESTO: the specialist agents in Agent Force, part of SEQUESTO aOS, pull the mobilisation questions, evaluation criteria, mandatory attachments and word limits out of the tender pack, and the bid manager confirms that structure before anyone drafts.

Work every date back from fixed lead times

Size the lead times you can't compress, starting with technology and system set-up, and work every milestone back from them to award. That order matters because complexity and technology are where a recent, publicly examined transition slipped.

The House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts examined Capita's transition to running the Civil Service Pension Scheme and found that of the eight transition milestones that had passed, only one had all its elements delivered on time. The Cabinet Office told the committee the delays came from Capita underestimating both the complexity of the transition and the time needed to implement the technology. By the end of March 2025, it had withheld £9.6 million of transition payments because of those delays.

For a bid team, the lesson is in the mechanics. A date in your plan can become a contract milestone, and a buyer can tie payment to it. An optimistic date isn't ambition; it's a cost you've priced at nothing.

So build the timeline from the end. List each workstream whose duration you can't shorten by adding effort: system build and testing, data migration, accounts and access for transferring staff, equipment, any vetting the service requires, and training. Ask IT and operations to size each one, and record who sized it. Put the longest chain against the service start date and work back to award. Where a step depends on the buyer or the incumbent, such as releasing data or granting site access, give it its own dated milestone, so a slip on their side shows up as theirs.

Then let the evaluator see the reasoning. For example, instead of a bare date for system go-live, the plan says what the date rests on: build, testing, data migration and the training that follows, each sized by the person who'll do the work. An evaluator can mark a date they can trace. A bare date they can only take on trust.

Set the staff transfer sequence for the country

Set the staff transfer steps by the law of the country where the service runs. In EU member states, that is the national law that applies the Acquired Rights Directive (Council Directive 2001/23/EC); in Great Britain, it is TUPE. Both protect the contracts of transferring staff, but the sequence your plan shows comes from the law governing this service.

In EU member states

The Acquired Rights Directive applies through each member state's own law, so ask employment legal to confirm the national rules for the country where the service runs before you set any date. Consultation with employee representatives goes on the timeline as a workstream with its own dates.

In Great Britain

TUPE requires the outgoing employer to provide employee liability information for staff in the transferring group, and the deadline is at least 28 days before the transfer. Your timeline for Great Britain works back from that point.

The plan treats late information as a risk with a dated chase and an escalation route.

In SEQUESTO: each question in the staff transfer section can carry its own reviewer and approver, so HR and employment legal sign it off on a route separate from the operational sections.

Name key people and plan for attrition

Name the people who'll lead mobilisation and the early service, and plan for staff losses between award and transfer. Either can undo a plan that's sound on dates.

Naming people is a commitment. Where an EU buyer scores the staff assigned to the contract, the recitals of Directive 2014/24/EU expect contract terms under which those staff can be replaced only with the buyer's consent and by someone of equivalent quality. Name only people you can commit for the mobilisation period, and say in the plan how a replacement would be proposed and approved.

Attrition is the other risk. In the Capita transition, the outgoing supplier reported its voluntary staff turnover rising from 12% at the end of 2023 to 24% at the end of 2024, after it lost the contract. The workforce you price on at bid stage may not be the workforce that transfers. The plan should say how you'd cover a shortfall: recruitment with its own lead time, cover from your existing teams, or both.

Training closes the loop. The same committee report noted that fully training staff for the most complicated pension cases can take up to six months. A lead time like that can run past a short mobilisation window, so the plan needs to show how you bridge it: which work new starters take on first, and who handles the hardest cases until they're ready.

State the assumptions behind price and dates

Write down every assumption your price and dates rest on, in the form the contract allows, so a gap in the data changes the price or the date after award rather than eating your margin.

Staff data is the obvious gap. The staff list you price on may be incomplete. A contract can let you set out an identifiable risk, such as inaccurate staff transfer data, as an assumption with a defined verification period, so the price or date changes only if the risk materialises. Check whether this tender's draft contract has a mechanism like it. Where it does, state each assumption in its terms. Where it doesn't, the assumption still belongs in the plan, but agree its treatment with the buyer before you submit.

The form of an assumption matters. One that names the data it rests on, the date of that data and what happens if it proves wrong reads as control. A general caveat reads as doubt. For example: "The price assumes the staff list issued with the tender is accurate. Where differences are found within the verification period, the price is adjusted as the contract allows."

Ask, as a clarification question, how errors found after award will be corrected and who bears the cost. Clarification questions as strategy covers how to frame that question so it settles the point before you submit.

Join your plan to the incumbent's exit

Show where your mobilisation meets the incumbent's exit, because the two depend on each other. Your plan is half of the handover, so write it to fit the other half.

Date each handover point against the incumbent's exit: when staff transfer, when data is handed over and in what state, when sites and equipment pass, and when the incumbent's people brief yours. Then show the governance that runs it with the buyer: who sits on the joint mobilisation board, how often it meets, what it decides and how an issue escalates.

After award, the plan passes from the bid team to whoever runs mobilisation. Make that handover deliberate. The bid manager walks the delivery lead through every dated commitment, every named person and every assumption, so the team running the work knows what the response promised. If the delivery lead agreed the dates before submission, this is a short meeting rather than a renegotiation.

Check the plan before submission

Run this check before the section goes for sign-off. Each statement should be true of your plan as written.

• The mobilisation window, any phasing requirement and the marking scheme come from this tender's documents.
• Each part of the plan answers a criterion in this tender's evaluation methodology.
• Every milestone traces to a named lead time and the person who sized it.
• Buyer and incumbent dependencies have their own dated milestones.
• The staff transfer sequence follows the law of the service's country, confirmed by employment legal.
• In Great Britain, the timeline works back from employee liability information due at least 28 days before transfer.
• Every named key person can be committed for the mobilisation period, with a stated replacement route.
• Staff attrition and training gaps each have a stated measure.
• Each assumption names its data, the date of that data and the contract mechanism that handles it.
• Each handover point is dated against the incumbent's exit, and the joint governance is named.
• The future delivery lead has agreed the dates.

Take the current draft of your mobilisation section and run it through this list today. Each statement it fails points to an input you don't have yet, and the colleague who owns that input is the one to ask before the next review.