Bilbao Ekintza — Winning Tender Demo Lessons

Overview. A set of three CEFR-differentiated demo lessons, designed in a few days to help a language academy win a public English-training tender for Bilbao Ekintza, the city’s economic development agency. The academy won the contract.

The challenge. Bilbao Ekintza put its English-language training out to tender. To win, the academy needed demo materials that proved both teaching quality and a real understanding of the client. I was asked to design them under three hard constraints. The turnaround was only a few days. The budget was minimal, so I worked entirely with tools I already had. And I had never set foot in Bilbao, so every detail of the city had to be researched from scratch.

My role. Sole instructional designer. Because I had built materials for this client before and they trusted the results, I was given full control of the content and the design approach.

The approach. One decision shaped everything. Rather than submit generic Business English, I built the whole set around Bilbao’s own story, its post-industrial regeneration, the Guggenheim, the Bilbao Effect, and the Zorrotzaurre district. For an agency whose mission is developing the city, lessons that used the city as their subject proved I understood the client’s world and could turn it into learning.

From there I designed three coherent versions across proficiency levels. Each targets a grammar point matched to its band, present perfect at B2, mixed conditionals at C1, and negative inversion at C2, while the cognitive demand rises in step, from describing the city’s transformation, to analyzing planning decisions, to arguing a persuasive investment case. I designed backward from clear objectives and fused content with language throughout, so learners acquire authentic urban-regeneration vocabulary while practicing the target structures.

Every lesson follows the same flipped structure. Self-paced pre-class input and practice prepare learners for a live session built on discussion, role-play, and a professional pitch. I produced it all in PowerPoint, with visuals from Freepik and AI support from Gemini, and I supplied teacher versions with full answer keys so any tutor on the team could deliver it consistently.

Deliverables. Three complete lessons at B2, C1, and C2, each with a student workbook and a teacher guide with answer keys.

The result. The academy won the tender.

Download samples: 

C1 The Isle of Innovation – Blueprinting Bilbao’s Future S

C1 The Isle of Innovation – Blueprinting Bilbao’s Future T