Your DTP and accessible-document partner for bids and tenders

Bid, tender or RFP: the same work

In the EU and the UK, public contracts are usually awarded through a call for tenders, and suppliers submit a tender. In the US and Canada the same process is called a bid or a solicitation, issued as an RFP (request for proposals), RFQ (request for quotations) or IFB (invitation for bids). Whatever the buyer calls it, the documents have to be laid out in every language, delivered on a fixed date and, more and more often, made accessible. That is the part we take on.

What we provide for your bid

• Free test pages. We lay out sample pages from the tender documents, so you can show the evaluation panel real output instead of a promise.
• Confidentiality. We sign your NDA or the confidentiality terms of the tender before we see the documents. Our standard NDA is available on request.
• Letter of commitment. A signed letter confirming Laydox as your DTP subcontractor, with the scope, capacity and prices you need for the bid file.
• Client references. References from current clients, on request and with their consent.
• Prices in your format. We price the volumes in the tender per page and fill in our part of the pricing schedule.

Tender deadlines do not move, so tell us the submission date first. Send the tender documents, the expected volumes and the languages to bids@laydox.com.

Who we work with

Three kinds of clients bring us into bids and tenders:

• Translation agencies. Most of our tender work. You bid for the translation contract and name us as your layout and accessibility partner. We deliver under your brand and to your project managers, and we don’t contact your client.
• Corporate translation departments. Companies with their own translation or localization team contract us directly, through their supplier tenders or RFPs or as an approved vendor.
• Public bodies and international organisations. Ministries, municipalities, public agencies, EU institutions and other international organisations contract us directly, wherever the procedure is open to a supplier based in Portugal (EU).

What we deliver under a public contract

• Multilingual layout in InDesign, Word and PowerPoint, matched to the source design: reports, brochures, forms, manuals and publications (print-ready layout)
• Editable files rebuilt from PDFs and scans for translation (PDF to Word, PDF to InDesign, OCR)
• Accessible PDF to PDF/UA and WCAG, with a conformance report for every file (Accessible PDF)
• E-learning courses in Articulate Storyline and Rise (e-learning) and technical drawings in AutoCAD and MicroStation (CAD processing)

Accessibility rules in public contracts

Public documents increasingly have to be accessible, and tender specifications say so. These are the rules we meet most often, by market:

In every case we deliver PDFs that pass PDF/UA and WCAG checks in PAC 2024, plus a manual review of what a validator cannot judge. See Accessible PDF for the details, and what accessible PDF remediation costs for prices with worked examples.

Scripts and languages

Our core is Latin and Cyrillic scripts: English, Portuguese, Spanish, French, German and the other Latin-script languages, plus Bulgarian, Serbian, Macedonian, Ukrainian and Russian. Greek, Arabic, Hebrew and Chinese, Japanese and Korean are available on request, after we have reviewed the files.

Company facts for supplier forms

Legal name	Leitstern Unipessoal LDA
Brand	Laydox
Country	Portugal (EU)
VAT / NIPC	PT517690683
Registered address	Estrada de Santa Maria, 53, 2705-559 São João das Lampas, Portugal
Experience	Core team working together since 2014; company incorporated in 2023
Team	A core team that runs the projects, plus vetted freelance DTP specialists matched to each contract and scaled to its volume
Software	Adobe InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop and Acrobat Pro; Microsoft Office; Articulate Storyline and Rise; AutoCAD, MicroStation; axesPDF, CommonLook and PAC 2024 for accessibility
Prices	In EUR, per page; see rates
Contact for bids	bids@laydox.com