How five years of feedback, continuous improvement and strategic tender support helped NVC Security achieve a perfect quality score and win Derby City Council's security contract.
Headline stats
Client: NVC Security Ltd
Sector: Security Services
Support Provided: Long-term tender strategy, bid management and continuous improvement
Key outcomes:
- Won Derby City Council’s security services contract (TD2330) ranked first with 92.35%
- Perfect scores for quality (40/40) and social value (10/10)
- Overall score climbed from 76.42 in 2021 to 92.35 in 2026, across three tender cycles
- Price gap to the cheapest bidder narrowed from nearly 30% to within 5–10%
- Five years of tender learning turned into a repeatable, evidence-led approach to winning public sector work.
- Two unsuccessful bids provided the blueprint for the winning one
Why did the client come to us?
NVC Security was established in Derby in 2013 and still calls it home. From their head office in Mackworth and a second base in Leicester as the business grew, they look after clients across Derby, Nottingham, Leicester and Burton upon Trent, backed by more than 30 years of combined experience, SIA Approved Contractor status for security guarding and key holding, and Safe Contractor certification.
What they didn’t have (yet!) was a public sector contract win. So, when Derby City Council released its Provision of Security Services tender (TD1586) in 2020, Director Christopher Perry picked up the phone to Complete Tenders.
The operational side was never in doubt. NVC knew the work and knew the city. The challenge was proving it on paper, in the way public sector evaluators actually score. Together, we began building a more structured approach to tendering: clear responsibilities, firm deadlines, and a disciplined focus on how the Council would actually evaluate and score the submission. The bid went in on time and cleared the qualifying stage. Then the results landed in March 2021. Second place. NVC scored 76.42 against the winner’s 82.05 and the detail made uncomfortable reading: 48.28 out of 60 on quality against the winner’s perfect 60, and a price roughly 30% above the cheapest bid.
It would have been easy to walk away. Instead, NVC treated the feedback as a to-do list. That decision became the foundation of a five-year improvement cycle. Rather than treating the unsuccessful tender as wasted effort, we used it as evidence: identifying where points had been lost, strengthening the business case and carrying those lessons into the next opportunity.
How we helped
The 2021 feedback was specific enough to act on. NVC had dropped marks on response times for concurrent calls, on social value and the Derby economy, and on equality and inclusion. Their answers were acceptable, but acceptable doesn’t win tenders. They lacked numbers, specifics and hard local evidence, so we rebuilt each one around quantifiable commitments and gathered the evidence to back every claim.
When the Council retendered in 2022 (TD1771), the progress was obvious. NVC scored 94.73 against the winner’s 96.93. The quality gap had shrunk from nearly 12 points to 4.47, and the price now sat just 2% above the lowest bid; a transformation from the year before.
Still second, though – and this time the feedback said something different. NVC’s responses were strong and well-evidenced almost everywhere. The winner edged it on three things: compliance with the Council House specification, performance monitoring, and social value. Crucially, the gap was no longer about capability. It was about the depth of the evidence and about showing where NVC could go beyond the specification rather than simply meeting it.
That became the playbook. We sharpened the performance monitoring story until it named real systems, real responsibilities and real data. We put NVC’s contribution to the Derby economy front and centre; quantified, evidenced, impossible to skim past. And wherever the service exceeded the spec, we said so explicitly, in terms evaluators couldn’t miss.
By this point, the relationship had also changed. We were no longer approaching each procurement as a fresh tender-writing exercise. We had accumulated knowledge: previous submissions, evaluator feedback, stronger evidence, a deeper understanding of NVC’s operation and a clearer picture of what Derby City Council valued. Each tender therefore started from a stronger position than the one before.
Then we went further, beyond the tender documents altogether. As the 2026 submission took shape, research and writing ran side by side. Newspaper reports. Local press coverage. Council minutes and public records. Anything that shed light on the security issues the Council had actually faced at these sites over the years. Where the record showed a problem, an incident at or around one of the buildings, a pattern of issues that had made the local news, we found it, understood it and included the solution within the response.
That research changed the nature of the bid as it was being written. Instead of describing what NVC does, each answer described what NVC would do there, at that building, against that documented problem, with that site history in mind. Where the Council House had faced a particular type of incident, the response named it and showed exactly how NVC’s deployment, technology and response protocols would prevent a repeat. Where a site had a known pattern of issues, the answer set out the specific measures, patrol frequency, camera coverage, response times, that would break it. Every claim was anchored to something the evaluator would recognise from their own records.
That kind of homework does two things. It makes answers specific in a way that competitors recycling generic method statements simply can’t match, because you can’t be relevant to a buyer’s problems if you’ve never taken time to find out what they are. And it shows the buyer something no boilerplate ever can: that you’ve taken a genuine interest in their problems, not just their contract. When the panel wrote that NVC demonstrated an excellent grasp of what each site’s security actually needed, this is what they were responding to. Not a bidder who had read the specification. A bidder who had read them.
The pricing discipline held too. Getting from 30% adrift to 2% proved NVC understood the realities of public sector pricing. The job now was to keep that edge.
How we Won
In 2026, Derby City Council retendered under a Competitive Flexible Procedure (TD2330). NVC’s bid drew on five years of learning, two rounds of line-by-line feedback and a body of evidence refined with every cycle. The winning submission wasn’t created in isolation in 2026. In many respects, it had been five years in the making.
The result: first place, 92.35%, the most advantageous tender.
Quality: worth 40 points across nine questions and NVC scored a perfect 40. The panel found that NVC’s answers addressed every aspect of the specification and showed an excellent grasp of what each site’s security actually needed. More than that, NVC exceeded the spec in ways evaluators could see clearly: ANPR integration, body-worn camera livestreaming, drone-supported patrols, an in-house 24/7 Security Operations Centre, a live mobilisation tracker, a real-time client dashboard, 15-minute response capability and rapidly deployable mobile security towers.
Social value scored a perfect 10 out of 10; the payoff from years spent shaping a commitment to Derby that was specific, measurable, time-bound and, above all, genuine.
On price, NVC ranked first for vehicle patrolling and CCTV and stayed competitive on security personnel. Keyholding came in higher than other bidders, but by then the quality and social value scores had already settled it.
What It Really Took
The win matters. But the real story is the five years between that first loss and this result – and the relationship that carried it.
From day one, this was a shared effort. Same client, same contracting authority, three tender cycles, one team. Both sides invested, both sides accountable. It was never transactional. After every submission, we sat down with the feedback and went through it line by line. No score brushed aside, no evaluator comment ignored. Every gap between NVC and the winner was analysed, understood and built into the next bid. Nothing was wasted. For 2026, the team also had a writer with direct security sector experience; one more layer on an already deep understanding of how NVC operates.
The trajectory says it all. 2021: 76.42, quality well behind the winner. 2022: 94.73, within touching distance. 2026: a perfect quality score and first place outright.
NVC’s strengths were there from the start: the ACS status, the local knowledge, the genuine commitment to Derby. The work, done together, was turning all of that into written evidence evaluators could see, score and reward. The 2026 award is the outcome. The process NVC and Complete Tenders built together is the asset.
That cycle – submit, learn, improve and submit again – sits at the heart of the Complete Tenders System today. NVC’s journey demonstrates why: sustainable tender success rarely comes from one brilliant submission; it comes from creating a process that gets stronger every time it is used.
The Lesson
Winning a public sector contract is rarely a single event. More often, it’s the product of learning, treating every submission as a data point, every piece of feedback as an opportunity, and every loss as a step closer rather than a door closing.
NVC’s journey shows what continuous improvement actually looks like. Not a dramatic reinvention, but a disciplined cycle of listening, adapting and building. The score gap narrowed because the approach improved. The approach improved because the feedback was taken seriously.
That’s the philosophy behind the Complete Tenders System today. We help SMEs move beyond reactive tender writing and build a more structured approach to winning contracts – identifying the right opportunities, learning from every outcome and continuously strengthening performance over time.
The objective isn’t simply to produce a better tender. It’s to build a better tendering function: one capable of delivering more consistent contract wins and supporting long-term business growth.
NVC’s 2026 award is the result. The five-year journey that made it possible is the real success story.
“Coming second twice was frustrating, but each time Complete Tenders helped us understand exactly where we could improve rather than simply moving on to the next opportunity.
We kept learning, strengthening our approach and building on what we’d done before, so finally winning the Derby City Council contract was a fantastic result. Achieving perfect scores for both quality and social value made it even better.
Complete Tenders have been with us throughout that journey and have become a real extension of our team.”
Chris Perry, NVC Security Ltd
FAQs
How can security companies improve their tender win rate?
Security companies can improve their tender win rate by selecting the right opportunities, responding directly to evaluation criteria, using strong evidence and learning from feedback after every submission.
What do councils look for in security tenders?
Councils typically look for evidence of service quality, compliance, relevant experience, performance management, response capability, social value and competitive pricing. Responses should clearly demonstrate how these will work in practice.
How important is feedback after losing a public sector tender?
Tender feedback is extremely valuable, it shows where marks were lost, where competitors performed better and what can be strengthened for future bids. Used properly, each unsuccessful tender can improve the next submission.
How can a security company build a long-term tender strategy?
A long-term tender strategy means moving beyond individual bids and creating a repeatable process. This includes identifying suitable opportunities, building a strong evidence library, analysing feedback and continuously improving future submissions.
