A CV library ready for tenders
How a South African firm keeps key-staff CVs ready for tenders, how AI reformats them into the firm's layout without adding facts, and who reviews them.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Accountants & audit firms in South Africa
Every tender asks for the CVs of the key people who will do the work, and every tender seems to arrive when those people are busiest. Someone digs out the engagement manager's CV from a bid two years ago, updates it in a hurry, pastes it into the bid's template and hopes the qualifications are still right. A partner's CV turns up in three different formats across three bids in the same month.
A CV library fixes most of that: a current, approved CV for each person the firm is likely to put forward, ready to adapt. This article explains what evaluators look for, how to keep the library current, how Achekam's AI rewrites CVs into the firm's layout without adding facts, and how review works before a CV goes into a bid.
What evaluators look for
Public sector evaluators score key personnel against the tender's own criteria, and those vary. Most, though, look for the same things:
- relevant qualifications and professional registration, with evidence;
- experience in work of the same kind and scale as the tender;
- named previous projects, with the role the person played;
- the role the person will play on this contract;
- consistency between the CV, the methodology and the team structure in the bid.
Read the tender's evaluation criteria first and build each CV to answer them. A CV that lists everything a person has done, without showing the specific experience the criteria reward, scores lower than a shorter one that does. Achekam's AI can help find those criteria: it can read a tender's documents and add a requirement only when the exact words it quotes are found in them, each marked unverified until the bid manager confirms it. Tender requirements and response drafts covers that step.
A library kept current
Staff can build a CV library on the tender page, under Team & CV Builder. The library is only valuable if it is current. A few rules keep it so:
- Each person owns their CV and updates it twice a year, and after any significant engagement.
- Qualifications and registrations are checked against evidence at each update.
- Project descriptions use facts the firm can stand behind: client type, scope, the person's role, the period.
- A partner or the bid manager approves each update.
CVs are personal information. Staff should know that their CVs are kept for tenders and may be sent to public bodies, and the firm should keep only what the purpose needs. POPIA, whose official text sets the conditions for lawfully processing personal information, applies to the library like any other staff record.
Rewritten into the firm's layout without new facts
Bids look better, and are easier to evaluate, when every CV follows the same layout. Achekam can have AI rewrite each CV in the library into the firm's layout without adding facts.
That limit is the important part. The AI reorganises and rewords what the CV already says; it is not meant to invent a qualification, a project or a year of experience. The same principle runs through Achekam's tender drafting: in the Response Studio, AI drafts a bid section only from the firm's approved capabilities, verified references and the buyer's documents, and saves nothing if the draft claims something those records do not support.
Two other safeguards are worth knowing. Achekam's AI engine refuses any task whose type is giving an opinion, reaching a conclusion, approving or signing. And by default it removes South African ID numbers before text is sent to an AI vendor, which matters for CVs; that removal can be switched off in AI settings, so check that it is on. The AI features use the firm's own API key first; with no key at all, every AI feature says so and drafts nothing. What Achekam's AI can see and do sets out the wider rules.
Stamped DRAFT until reviewed
A rewritten CV is downloadable as PDF or Word with a DRAFT stamp until a person reviews it. The stamp is a practical safeguard: a CV that still says DRAFT cannot slip into a bid pack unnoticed.
The reviewer should check the rewritten CV against the approved library version, line by line:
| Check | Why |
|---|---|
| Qualifications and registrations unchanged | Rewording must not upgrade a qualification |
| Projects and dates unchanged | Evaluators may verify them |
| Role on this tender matches the bid's team structure | Inconsistency costs points |
| Nothing added that the original did not say | The rewrite must not create claims |
Ideally the person whose CV it is reads it too. They are the one most likely to spot a subtle change in meaning.
Review is also where the CV meets the rest of the bid. Check that the years of experience, the role and the projects in each CV match what the methodology and the team organogram say about the same person. Evaluators read across documents, and a manager described as leading fieldwork in the methodology but as a reviewer in the CV invites a lower score or a clarification question at the worst moment.
PDF or Word
Download the reviewed CV as PDF for a bid that asks for fixed documents, or as Word when the tender requires its own template and the content must be pasted in. Either way, keep the version submitted with the bid, so the firm can show later exactly what it said about each person.
This quarter
List the people the firm is most likely to put forward in the next year's tenders. Ask each to update their library CV against the checklist above, have a partner approve each one, and rewrite them into the firm's layout so the next bid starts from a complete, reviewed set.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
