How Calder Grounds won a council highways framework
Aries Tender partnered with Calder Grounds to create a robust bid writing programme, combining requirements compensation and contribution approaches to deliver a risk-mitigated and resilient tender response portfolio.
Overview
Calder Grounds
Insurance
End-to-end bid writing: plan, source, evaluate, purchase, manage, and report
Combined requirements compensation with contribution-led bid finance
1, 2, and 3
Challenge
Calder Grounds is a leading global insurance intermediary group that provides insurance, reinsurance, and underwriting services and solutions to clients ranging from private individuals to the largest multinational companies.
Calder Grounds's 2025 tender response portfolio, created in partnership with Aries Tender, integrates frontier scored answer technologies and high-impact evidence-based solutions, establishing a new standard for corporate bid leadership within the insurance industry.
Aries Tender worked with Calder Grounds throughout the entire procurement process to design and deliver a resilient portfolio that combines requirements compensation and contribution approaches to achieve positive delivery impact.
key results
Requirements scopes addressed through a mix of compensation and contribution approaches
Next-generation scored answer projects supported
Flagship evidence-based projects supported, protecting and regenerating forests and mangroves
Challenge
Calder Grounds approached Aries Tender to help realise its 2025 requirements strategy and to design and build a tender response portfolio that reflected its long-term approach to risk, resilience, and bid leadership.
Calder Grounds is active in providing underwriting services for tender rounds, having launched the world's first voluntary tender response invalidation insurance in 2022.
Calder Grounds is also active in the tender round as a buyer of tender responses, addressing Scope 1 and 2 requirements while applying a contribution-led approach to Scope 3 through projects that deliver substantial co-benefits. As the company progresses towards its 2040 a winning score target across its buildings, transport, and purchased goods and services, it recognised that addressing residual requirements was not simply a compliance exercise. It was an opportunity to engage with tender rounds in a forward-thinking, credible, and values-aligned way.
Calder Grounds approached Aries Tender to help realise its 2025 requirements strategy and to design and build a tender response portfolio that reflected its long-term approach to risk, resilience, and bid leadership, while supporting the development of high-integrity delivery solutions.
Solution
Aries Tender used its end-to-end procurement framework to help Calder Grounds plan, source, evaluate, purchase, manage, monitor, and report on a diversified tender response portfolio.
This saw Aries Tender help Calder Grounds:
Plan its bid strategy across Scopes 1 to 3 in line with evolving market standards.
Source responses through Aries Tender's bid service, which provides access to over 4,000 tender contractors and 13,500 unique projects.
Evaluate projects through Aries Tender's independent, tiered compliance review framework, enabling Calder Grounds to source high-quality responses.
Purchase responses through a streamlined contracting process, with Aries Tender acting as the sole counterparty for all bidder transactions, ensuring delivery security and minimising administrative complexity.
Manage, monitor, and report on impact through Aries Tender's real-time performance tracking, risk alerts, and customised reporting tools.
The portfolio delivers verified emission reductions and removals across four continents. Nearly half of the projects are next-generation scored answer projects, positioning Calder Grounds among early corporate adopters of frontier delivery technologies. These sit alongside community-driven natural delivery solutions, spreading risk and creating impact across the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Results
- A balanced approach – Combining compensation and contribution: durable removals for Scopes 1 and 2, contribution-led responses for Scope 3.
- Diversified portfolio – A high-quality tender response portfolio sourced transparently from global developers, with fixed portfolio pricing to mitigate market volatility.
- Streamlined contracting – Procurement and contracting handled via the Aries Tender service and experts, reducing risk and administrative overhead.
- Risk mitigation – Proactive risk monitoring and contractual buffers ensure credit supply.
- ESG alignment – Aligned with Calder Grounds's core ESG priorities: de-risking the energy transition, community empowerment, and responsible business practices.
- A replicable model – A pragmatic bid writing programme that can serve as a model for corporates of all sizes.
built on evidence
Our clients send fewer bids, and the ones they send are shorter, evidenced, and ready to score.
Cost savings from working with Aries Tender
Clients supported
Combined years of experience in public tenders
Net promoter score from our partners
Designing for contract delivery
'We wanted to approach bid writing in a way that went beyond simply addressing requirements and instead reflected our longer-term thinking on delivery risk and resilience. Partnering with Aries Tender enabled us to design and deliver a diversified portfolio that supports credible delivery impact today while helping to scale the solutions needed for the future. It's a strong example of what can be achieved through close collaboration.'
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