CASE STUDIES
Mactaquac Life Achievement Project
Independent Bid Review and Strategic Co-Development for a major hydroelectric rehabilitation
THE PROJECT
The Mactaquac Life Achievement Project is a once-in-a-generation hydroelectric rehabilitation, intended to extend the Mactaquac Generating Station to its full 100-year design life. It's one of the largest infrastructure investments in New Brunswick's history, spanning major civil, mechanical, electrical, and environmental works for NB Power. A consortium of major contractors pursued the project. We worked alongside their pursuit team.
THE CHALLENGE
The technical submission ran many interdependent sections, written by numerous contributors across several organizations and disciplines. Governance, schedule, project controls, in-water works, environment, risk, value engineering, and more, each authored by a different specialist team.
The consortium had deep technical capability. The harder problem was the submission itself. Many strong sections, written by many hands, sitting side by side without reading as one bid. An evaluator following that document has to work to connect it. On a pursuit this large, that's where points slip away: in the gap between technical strength and a story that holds together.
WHAT WE DID
We were brought in first to run an Independent Bid Review of the technical submission, scoring it against our proprietary evaluation framework to show the consortium where the bid stood and where the points were at risk.
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As the pursuit progressed, our role grew. Over the next five months, we worked alongside the team as strategic co-development partners across the full technical proposal. We reviewed and challenged draft content section by section, worked through a high volume of review comments across successive cycles, developed and integrated win themes across the submission, aligned messaging across technical workstreams and partner organizations, sharpened the evaluator-facing narrative, and ran executive-level reviews as the submission came together.
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We were after one thing: a single integrated story across the entire technical proposal, reading as the work of one team. Better individual sections were a means to that. The integrated whole was the goal.
THE OUTCOME
Our client was selected as Preferred Proponent for the project. The technical submission was strengthened across multiple evaluated sections. Strategic messaging was aligned across disciplines and partner organizations. Consistency, readability, and the evaluator's experience of the document all improved.