Long Hours Aren't A Badge Of Honour In Tendering: They Are A Red Flag
There is a club in the bidding world that I refuse to join.
It doesn’t have an official clubhouse, but if you’ve been in this industry long enough, you know exactly where to find it. You find it in the late-night text messages, the lukewarm takeaway containers littering the boardroom table, and the weary, caffeine-fueled voices during a midnight review.
It’s the “Long Hours as a Badge of Honour” Club.
My first introduction to this club happened early in my career. I turned up at 8:15 one morning during a major Public-Private Partnership (PPP) tender. As I walked past one of the desks, I noticed something unexpected tucked underneath it: a blow-up mattress, a pillow, and a blanket.
A moment later, someone piped up, almost with a sense of joy and pride: “Oh yeah, I slept under the desk last night. Only got about three hours of sleep!”
They wore that exhaustion like a medal. They wanted everyone to see the sacrifice. But even then, looking at that makeshift bed on the office floor, I knew something was deeply wrong with that picture.
Personally? I don’t have a badge. I wear many lovely vintage brooches, but I have no interest in wearing a badge of burnout. In fact, I have become a fierce advocate against it. Because the truth we rarely admit out loud is this: long hours in tendering aren’t a sign of commitment. They are a red flag.
Tenders are inherently stressful, high-pressure, and fast-moving. We accept that as part of the job. But because they are stressful, they cannot be allowed to become all-consuming. Work must take up a finite period of the day so that you have the time and space to recover.
When we push past those healthy boundaries, we hit a wall of diminishing returns.
If you are working a standard eight-hour day, taking short breaks to stand up, grab a glass of water, and break the intense focus, you stay sharp. You stay productive. But when you stretch that into a 14, 16, or 18-hour day? You aren’t getting quality out of an exhausted brain.
In almost any other corporate function, pulling regular all-nighters would be seen as a crisis. Yet in the bidding world, we treat long hours in tendering as a given.
Why aren't more of us loudly refusing to wear that badge?
When we accept chronic overwork as the industry standard, it reflects terribly on our profession. It shows an inherent disrespect for the actual craft of bidding. We are trading strategic thinking for sheer endurance, and it hurts the final product.
Every time your team is non-productive and completely drained, the quality of your submission drops. Even a 2% drop in quality like a missed detail, a rushed executive summary, a sloppy compliance check, can be the exact margin between winning and losing. You cannot win when your team is running on empty.
When a bid team is consistently working around the clock, it’s rarely because the deadline was too tight or the scope was too big. Long hours in tendering are a diagnostic symptom. They are a sign that something is fundamentally broken in your resourcing, your planning, your project management, or your tender culture as a whole.
When you see a team burning midnight oil, it is usually a sign of:
Bottlenecks: Decisions getting stuck at the top.
Inefficiencies: Teams spinning their wheels on the wrong tasks.
Onerous Governance: Approval processes that choke the life out of the schedule.
Broken Processes: Frameworks that are either completely ignored or followed so rigidly that they kill flexibility.
Most importantly, it’s a sign that a business is not treating its tender operations with the same respect, discipline, and structure it applies to its core operations.
Tendering is a high-stakes team sport, but not at the cost of the team’s wellbeing.
We need to stop rewarding the martyrdom of the all-nighter. We need to stop looking at the person who slept under their desk as the hero of the bid, and start looking at them as a sign that something in the bid dynamic has failed them.
The value we bring to a bid doesn't come from how much we suffered to get it over the line; it comes from the clarity, strategy, and care we put into the solution. And you cannot do that without rest.
So, what is my response when the culture invites me to join the long-hours club?
No thanks. I’m going to go get eight hours of sleep because a well-rested mind is the best strategic weapon I can bring to a bid team.
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[00:00:50] Deb: I turned up at 8 15 1 morning on a major public private partnership tender, and I saw a blow up [00:01:00] mattress, a pillow, and a blanket under a desk, and I heard at exactly the same time, almost with Joy. Oh yeah, I slept under the desk. I only got about three hours sleep and that was my first experience in colour of the long hours as a badge of honour in Tendering Club.
[00:01:25] I have no badge. I have a lovely vintage broach, but I have no badge. I am not a member of the, uh, long hours or a badge of honour in tendering club. In fact, I'm an advocate against it. Why? Because our job can't be everything because tenders are stressful and pressurised as they are, and so they can't be all consuming of our lives.
[00:01:52] They have to take up a finite period of our day, and then you need a period in which to recover. There's one [00:02:00] element. Two, you are not productive after a certain period of time. So if you are working an eight hour day and you're having breaks, you know, stand up after half an hour, five minute break, go get a glass of water, go to the bathroom, whatever you need to do to, to stop the intense focus and then come back to it after five minutes, you're gonna be productive in that eight hour day.
[00:02:25] But if you are doing an 18 hour day, well, it's just diminishing returns. You're not getting quality out of a person that is actually exhausted. Three, on other jobs, people aren't expected to pull all-nighters. So why is it just a given in the tendering field? Why aren't more people loudly saying, I will not wear that badge?
[00:02:48] Because honestly, it's a terrible reflection of an industry. It's a terrible reflection on a profession, and it shows a inherent disrespect for what we do in [00:03:00] that profession for, because you won't win every 2%. You put in once people are exhausted and non-productive. It's 2% less quality on your bid. And finally, long hours are actually a sign that there is something fundamentally wrong with your resourcing, your planning, your project management, and your tender as a whole.
[00:03:27] Because what long hours are is a sign of bottlenecks, a sign of inefficiencies, a sign of onerous governance, a sign of process not being followed, or process being followed too strictly, a sign of a lack of flexibility, and honestly, a sign that you are not treating tenders in your business the way you would treat the operations of your business.
[00:03:53] So what is my response to joining the long hours as a badge of honour club? No thanks. [00:04:00] I'm gonna go get eight hours sleep.
