Volkswagen Group Africa · RFQ 6000127062
What to ask in today's briefing session, what to hold back, and what to listen for. Built for the room, not for the file.
Prepared by
K2024490035 (Pty) Ltd
trading as Lumanaire.
2-6a Lifestyle on Kloof,
50 Kloof Street, Gardens
WhatsApp: +27 82 046 1926
hello@lumanaire.co.za
Prepared for
Darren Sandras
Managing Director
One-eyed Jack
darren@one-eyedjack.co.za
Bidding as vendor no. 10157
Read first This is a joint briefing. Every competitor is in the room.
Our working notes assumed a private 30 minute agency session. It is not. Tanja has put all six bidding agencies on one Teams call, together with the VWGA decision makers. Every question you ask is answered in front of five rivals, and every question tells them where you are strong.
| Agency | On the call | Threat to us |
|---|---|---|
| One-eyed Jack | Darren Sandras | Us |
| Trainiac | Niki Rakgoadi | High Corporate L&D specialist, VW already a client |
| Achievement Awards Group | Jodie Block | High Dealer incentive and rewards is their core business |
| IMA | Kirsten Bohle | Medium Smollan owned, Level 1 B-BBEE |
| Full Circle | Yazeed | Medium Automotive experiential, Audi SA work |
| Beyond Red | Greg Lipton | Low Live events only, no platform |
Note Brenda Henning is not on the invite
The VWGA side is Tanja Lapersonne (procurement), Abubakr Raban (Manager: Training Academy), Chrystal Christian (Head: NSO Services), Andiswa Mbatha and Ntomboxolo Nyathi. Brenda is the technical contact and she is absent, so deep technical answers most likely will not land live. Plan to follow up in writing.
So questions split three ways: ask live (commodity, unblocks our pricing, gives nothing away), ask in writing after, and never ask, just assume it in the proposal.
1 No AI notetaker on this call
The invite states plainly that unauthorised tools for recording or transcribing MS Teams meetings violate Volkswagen security and privacy policy and are prohibited. Do not let Circleback, Otter, Fireflies or any assistant auto join. A bot appearing in a procurement call is a compliance incident with the client before we have even bid. Take manual notes.
2 In that room you are One-eyed Jack
The word Lumanaire cannot surface on a live call with five competitors and procurement listening. RFP Part 6 (disclosure of any third party executing part of the work) is still an open decision, so do not pre-empt it by accident. Anyone joining from our side attends as part of the OEJ team.
3 Do not describe the concept
This is a briefing, not the pitch. Our slot to present is a separate one hour session on 30 or 31 July. Do not mention Tengo World, the cockpit idea, the championship mechanics or the AI simulator. Ask questions, do not pitch. Anyone in that room can borrow a good idea inside five days.
Ranked. The first three are the ones that genuinely change our bid. Tick them off as you go.
How many participants? Learners across the SA dealer network, the CIC and the six SSA markets, and how many dealers?
This number appears nowhere in any document we have been given, and everything prices off it: hosting, load, leaderboard design, content volume. Every bidder needs it, so there is zero strategic giveaway.
Language: English only, or do the SSA markets need French and Portuguese?
French for Cote d'Ivoire and Madagascar, Portuguese for Angola and Mozambique. This is a large scope and price swing and we currently carry both as separately priced options.
Does the published journey shift with the actual PO date? Award lands mid August but The Drop is scheduled to start in August, and the July planning window has already passed.
Protects us against T&Cs 4.6 and 4.7, which carry uncapped consequential loss exposure for missed dates. Asking it also reads as the serious delivery partner in the room, at no strategic cost.
Is there a budget guideline or envelope for Phase 1?
She will most likely decline in an open room. Ask anyway. See the commercial flag on the next page, this matters more than it looks.
Rewards: is physical prize procurement and fulfilment in the supplier's scope, or handled by VWGA?
Directly changes what we price. We have assumed VWGA fulfils and we handle winner determination plus the audit trail.
Industrial theatre: is live performance in this phase, or Phase 2 with only digital integration here?
Scope defining and a real cost line. We have assumed live actors and staging are Phase 2 and that we cover the digital integration plus dramatised video.
Will the final evaluation criteria and their weightings be shared?
The RFQ says criteria and weighting remain subject to Procurement requirements. Knowing the weightings tells us exactly where to spend the next five days.
Housekeeping: confirm the submission address, the deadline, and what must be returned.
Her email body carries a typo (vwsas.co.za) while every document says vwsa.co.za. The email and RFQ form say 12h00 but the RFP Word document says 15h00. Also confirm the signed RFQ form and the slide 12 planning and pricing summary table come back with the proposal.
Check first Did the clarification email actually go out?
We drafted a ten question email to Brenda with Tanja copied. If it was sent, several of the live questions above are already answered and you should not burn airtime on them. Worth a two minute check before 15h00.
Caveat Written questions are often circulated to all bidders
In formal procurement, clarifications are commonly shared with every bidder for fairness. Assume anything we put in writing may reach the other five. Worth asking Tanja directly, privately, whether Q&A gets circulated.
Anything that reveals strategy stays internal and becomes a stated assumption in the proposal instead:
The other five agencies' questions are free competitor intelligence, and this is the only moment you will ever hear them. Note who asks what.
| If you hear | It tells you |
|---|---|
| Achievement Awards asking mostly about rewards, prizes and fulfilment | Confirms a rewards led pitch with a learning veneer. Their weak flank is the learning half. |
| Trainiac asking about SCORM authoring or instructional design | Confirms they are leaning L&D and not gamification. Their weak flank is the championship product. |
| Anyone asking about platform, hosting, integration or data | A genuine technical threat. Note exactly who. |
| Questions about B-BBEE weighting | IMA or Full Circle playing their Level 1 advantage. |
| Silence from an agency | Either disengaged, or already confident. Note it either way. |
Money We priced under R1 million with no budget signal at all
We are currently at R690 000 core and R970 000 with every option added, excluding VAT. That ceiling was set by us, not by VWGA, and nothing in the RFQ indicates a budget.
If their envelope is two or three million, that ceiling costs real money and risks reading as under scoped for a national, seven country, six month programme. The RFQ states explicitly that VWGA is not bound to accept the cheapest proposal.
Today is the one chance to probe it before Monday. Even a refusal to answer, or another agency's reaction to the question, is information. If anything suggests a larger envelope, flag it straight after the call and we can re cut the pricing before submission.
Reminder Full scope or disregarded
Proposals that skip any requirement are binned on the assumption the requirement cannot be met. Every bullet in RFP Part 3.4 needs an answer in our submission. That is already handled in the draft, it just cannot slip.