How Legends Boxing Academy scored 196.60 out of 200 to win the tender
- Marc Bates
- Jun 9
- 5 min read
A boxing programme serving local students, a contract worth a significant amount a year, and five competing professionally written tenders. Here's how we won it, and what the process actually looked like.
The background
Legends Boxing Academy has been running a boxing and fitness programme across New City College campuses in East London since 2017. The programme serves more than 75 students, including young people with special educational needs and disabilities, and 14 to 19-year-olds who often arrive disengaged, at risk, or simply in need of a structured environment that works for them.
Jamie Williams, who founded Legends, has spent years building something that genuinely matters to the young people it serves. The results are real. The relationships with the college are real. The programme works.
But when the contract came up for formal re-tender, as public-sector contracts periodically do, Legends had to compete against whoever chose to bid.
What we were up against
The tender was issued by New City College, a large further education college with multiple campuses across East London. The contract value was significant, attracting the attention of four other organisations, each of which submitted professionally written responses.
The scoring framework was structured across five weighted categories. This is typical of further education procurement: each qualitative question sits within a category that carries a specific percentage of the overall score, and responses are marked against defined criteria.
Knowing that structure before you write a single word is not optional. It shapes everything.
Service delivery – how the programme would be delivered day to day, staffing, methodology, and quality assurance.
Employability – how the programme creates progression pathways, qualifications, and employment outcomes for students.
Safeguarding – policies, procedures, and demonstrated understanding of the college's duty of care obligations.
Social value – the broader community benefit delivered by the programme beyond the contracted scope.
Innovation – how the programme would develop, improve, and respond to changing student needs over the contract period.
Fourteen questions in total. Each one needed a response that was specific, evidenced, and clearly mapped to the scoring criteria, not to what Legends thought was impressive about the programme.
How we approached it
The first thing I did was read the tender documents properly. The specification, the scoring framework, and the instructions to tenderers. It sounds obvious, but a surprising number of tender responses are written against the question as it appears on the page, without reference to the marking criteria sitting behind it. That's where marks are lost before a word is written.
Then I mapped each question to what the college was testing. Service delivery questions weren't really about delivery; they were about risk management and quality assurance from the college's perspective. Safeguarding questions weren't just about having a policy; they were about demonstrating that Legends understood the college's specific obligations and had embedded the right behaviours into how the programme runs, not just what it says on paper.
I spoke with Jamie at length, a proper conversation about how the programme works. Such as what happens in the first session with a new student, how they handle a young person who's struggling, what the relationship with the college pastoral team looks like in practice, what's changed since 2017 and why.
That detail is everything. It's what separates a response that reads like it could describe any programme from one that reads like it could only describe this one. Scorers notice the difference. They feel it, and the marks reflect it.
Writing to score, not to impress
There's a temptation in tender writing to lead with what you're most proud of. The accolades. The years of experience. The passion for what you do. None of that is wrong, but it must serve the question, not the other way around.
For every response I wrote, I asked the same question: if I were on the scoring panel, would this answer give me what I need to award full marks? If not, what's missing?
On the social value section, for example, it wasn't enough to say that boxing builds confidence. We needed to show how the programme connects to the wider community, what measurable difference it makes beyond the contracted students, and how Legends would evidence and report that over the contract term. Specific commitments. Specific metrics. Written in language that maps to how the college reports its own social value obligations, and critically, that reflected Jamie's understanding and commitment.
On innovation, we didn't just describe what Legends does now. We articulated a credible vision for how the programme would develop, with reference to emerging trends in sport and education, and a realistic plan for implementing those developments within the constraints of a college environment.
Every section was structured the same way: answer the question directly, provide the evidence, and connect it to the college's specific context. No padding. No generic statements. Nothing that a competing bidder could have written about their own programme.
The result196.60 out of 200
The highest score of all five submissions. Legends Boxing Academy retained and extended its contract with New City College. They were, in the words of the scoring outcome, the clear winner.
"We were up against four professionally written tenders. Ours scored 196.60 out of a possible 200 and was the easy winner. I can't thank Marc enough for all his support and help." – amie Williams, Founder, Legends Boxing Academy
What this tells us about tender writing
Legends were always going to win this contract on merit. They've built something exceptional over eight years, and the programme speaks for itself. But merit doesn't score itself. Someone must translate what a business does into language that a procurement panel can evaluate, evidence, and award marks for. And importantly, which they can justify to independent auditors.
That's the work; it's not quick. Done properly, a tender of this size takes days, not hours. But when a contract is worth serious money, the investment in getting the response right is not a difficult calculation to make.
The four competing organisations that submitted professionally written responses didn't lose because they were inferior. They lost because their responses didn't make the case as clearly, as specifically, or as compellingly as Legends' did.
That's what tender writing is. And that's what it's worth getting right.
If you have a contract coming up, whether you're an incumbent defending a tender or a challenger looking to break in, get in touch.
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About Marc Bates
Marc is a fractional marketing director who helps growing businesses sharpen their positioning and build stronger digital presence. Through Fractional Marc, he works with established companies ready for strategic direction and emerging businesses building their marketing foundations from scratch. He's also a co-founder of Iterato Training, an online Project Management training provider.
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