The multithreading system I used to win a 9-figure Energy EOR mandate

A generalist SaaS EOR (Employer of Record) platform sells to one buyer. A large energy programme has 25 people who can quietly kill your bid — and by the time the tender is public, the shortlist is already closed.

Every large energy tender is published on TED, the EU's official portal. But the supplier shortlist is set before the bid becomes public. If you begin your bid at the public notice, you are not bidding; you are watching.

These contracts do not operate as an open auction. The buyer runs a pre-qualification round first, then releases the full tender only to companies already on the approved list. The public posting is the final stage of a process that has run quietly for months, sometimes years.

The biggest contract I ever closed took five years of patience before the tender even opened. One of Europe's largest grid operators — the transmission system operator, or TSO, the kind of company that runs a country's power network — launched what they called Europe's largest energy-transition programme. At its core was a series of eleven offshore power stations, each taking around four years to build across multiple shipyards. The work was split across four EPC consortia (the contractor groups that actually build the platforms) and roughly a dozen shipyards in Asia and the Middle East.

The exclusive EOR and contracting deal that came out at the end of that process ran up to eight years and placed more than 400 people across seven countries at the outset. It was really two jobs in one: legally employing the operator's own European staff while they worked abroad, and hiring local quality inspectors at the shipyards. Two jobs, two completely different sets of rules. The tender would have only one winner across APAC and the Middle East — or possibly two: one in APAC and another in the Middle East.

Between 2019 and 2024, there were multiple changes in leadership and key decision-makers, and the TSO introduced major updates to its procurement and supplier-qualification processes. Staying up to date with those changes was essential. I won both regions because I had not gone away.

This is what a real timeline on an energy deal looks like, and it looks nothing like the textbook sale. Gartner says a typical complex purchase involves six to ten decision-makers, and that buyers spend only 17% of their time actually meeting suppliers. A programme like this has 25 people who shape the decision, and they fall into three groups: 11 who can sign a piece of it, 8 who can quietly kill it, and 6 who decide whether you are ever invited back. Miss any one of them and you are not in a weaker position — you are out.

Finding the door is the first step

Find the right procurement lead. It's not as easy as it sounds. In a company running eleven power stations across four contractor groups, there is no single procurement lead — there are several, each responsible for a different part, location, or contractor. Get close to the wrong one and you have a warm relationship with someone who has no say over the scope you want.

Some of my colleagues learned this the hard way. They built a relationship with a friendly contact in HR who promised to pass their details to procurement. It looked like progress. But the contact left, the handover never happened, and when the shortlist was set, the company's name was not on it.

My own way in was a Project Finance Director who, in this company, sat inside procurement. Not the most obvious name, not the fastest to reply, but the one who sees every part of the programme and actually has the authority to put your company on the tender list. We had met five years earlier at the final round of a single-country tender for the same grid operator. There were only two companies left: the one I represented and one competitor. We lost the bid, but I met all the key decision-makers and kept the relationship. That was enough to open the door when the larger programme started.

The right first door is rarely the one that opens easiest.

Who can kill it

The obvious requirements are the easy part. ISO certificates, an EcoVadis rating, an ESG and sustainability statement, GDPR compliance — every serious bidder has those, and they only get you in the door.

The real deciding factors are the ones no playbook lists, and they never appear in the tender. Instead, they create a missing yes. And on the tender scoring sheet, every missing yes is a NO. On a programme this size there are eight of these silent vetoes, and each one sits with a different person.

A local-content officer can stop you because your company cannot legally sponsor work visas in the country where the work is built. Put a station in Batam, Indonesia, and your ability to bring in and legally employ foreign crews becomes pass-or-fail, not a footnote.

A safety manager can stop you on your safety record. In the Netherlands and Germany, grid operators expect suppliers to hold a specific safety certification, the Safety Culture Ladder. Without it, you are not the cheaper option — you are disqualified.

Legal can stop you over a single indemnity clause. Finance can stop you over payment terms. A tax and social-security lead can stop you over how posted workers are structured across borders. A regulator or permit authority can stop you because the paperwork to put your people on site is not in order. Yard HSE can stop you at the gate over site access. And the company that currently holds the work almost always has a quiet supporter inside the building whose unofficial job is to make sure nothing changes.

Who can sign it

On a programme this size there is no single buyer. Authority is spread across eleven signatures: the programme directors who are the economic buyers, the project finance directors, the category and supply-chain lead, the tender evaluation and scoring lead, a package manager for each part of the build (the offshore converter platform, the jacket and topside, the onshore station), and a project director inside each of the four EPC consortia. Whoever can sign your work in one location has no authority over the next. Win one piece and you have won one piece. The rest are separate sales, with separate signers, on separate timelines.

And the people who say yes sit across two organisations, not one. The grid operator sets the rules: it approves suppliers, controls the shortlist, and sets the standards everyone must meet. But it does not put a single person on the ground. The EPC contractor groups do. They run the shipyards, the build schedule, and the day-to-day need for crews and inspectors. So the hiring decision sits with the EPC contractors, while permission to be considered sits with the operator.

That means you have to win two relationships at once. Court only the operator and you are approved but never used. Court only the EPC contractors and you are working today but exposed the moment the rules change. You need both.

This is why chasing one contact fails so badly here. You are not selling to a buyer. You are selling to a network, and you have to map the whole thing.

So you do not show up with a platform and a price. You show up with a solution built around that map: the TSO on one side, and every partner it relies on — the EPC contractors, the third-party service providers, the shipyards, the regulators — named and planned for. Your software platform is not the product. It is the raw material. You shape it around the network, piece by piece and country by country, until it fits a structure no off-the-shelf product ever could.

The layer that decides repeat work

Between the people who can block you and the people who can sign sits a group of six who decide whether you are ever invited back: the people who do the actual work. The global mobility coordinator, the HR leads, the commissioning managers, the QA/QC inspection leads, the construction managers and the crews they trust, and the client representatives and their families who are the operator's own staff at the yards. None of them sign the contract. But they can lift your score during the tender, and they decide quietly whether your initial two-year contract is extended.

This is the relationship layer — what I call the trust-based execution layer — and it is the part a competitor cannot copy. A rival platform can match your software in a quarter. It cannot fake a package manager phoning you first because he knows your people will clear the visa and safety checks and be on site when the project starts. That trust is earned on the ground, not in procurement, and it is the only advantage in this market that does not wear off.

What this means for your next bid

Map the organisational chart years before the tender appears, not weeks after publication. For your scope, identify the procurement individual who actually controls it, rather than the most accessible contact. Name all 25: the 11 who can sign, the 8 who can quietly veto (local content, safety, legal, finance, tax, regulator, yard access, the incumbent's supporter), and the 6 who decide whether you are invited back. For each, write down the specific risk that could turn their yes into a no. For each component of the build, identify the person who holds executive authority for that location. And secure placement on the approved supplier list before the tender is formally written — the public notice only confirms that the decision is already in motion without you.

The rate discussion is the final conversation, not the first one. A supplier who understands the organisational structure is not selling headcount. They are delivering what a 25-person buying group is truly seeking: the confidence that execution will not be interrupted on their watch.