Guide
Collect the evidence before you write
Almost every award submission is written first and evidenced afterwards. Reversing that order is the single change that improves an entry most, and it costs nothing.
Why the usual order fails
The normal sequence is: someone is told to enter, they open a document, they write a draft from memory and then they go looking for numbers to support what they have already said.
By that point the case is fixed. The strongest evidence in your files may support a completely different argument, but nobody will find it, because nobody is looking for it any more. They are looking for support for the argument already on the page.
Evidence gathered after the draft can only ever confirm the draft.
What to do instead
- Gather before you decide. Pull every document connected to the project before anyone writes a sentence. Reports, proposals, debriefs, minutes, correspondence, photographs, the tender you submitted.
- List what you can actually prove. Go through and write down every factual statement the material supports, with the document it came from. Do not editorialise. Just list.
- Then choose the case. Look at the list against the criteria and pick the argument the evidence is strongest on, which is frequently not the argument you assumed you would make.
- Write only from the list. If a sentence is not on the list, it either needs a source or it needs to come out.
- Chase the gaps last. Now you know precisely which three or four facts would make the case, so the request to your project team is short, specific and answerable.
The test
Take any paragraph of your last entry and ask, for each sentence, which document proves this. If the answer for more than a quarter of them is that it was general knowledge about the project, the entry was written in the wrong order.
Doing this properly usually reveals that the project you were going to enter is not your strongest one this year. That is the finding working, not the method failing.
Start with two answers.
Send an award you are actually entering and whatever project material you already have. You get two complete answers, the case we would make, the questions we would send your team and the claims that one more fact would unlock.
Credited in full if you go ahead. If you read it and walk away, you owe nothing further.