Tender Writing and the Award Criteria

Some authorities do not always complete this specific section, but in general this is where you will find out how the evaluators will be weighting their approach to marking the returned tender documents and subsequent contract award. Some tenders can be based solely on price, but more often than not you will find that there is a split between price and quality. Sometimes you may see technical ability included in these award criteria and more recently, since the passing of the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012, we have seen other criteria included such as Environmental, Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability.

This is good news for tender writers, as the more the evaluators include these sections the less of an influence price will have on the overall mark. This means that as a tender writer for your organisation, you will be able to have more of an influence over the evaluators’ decision to award the contract through the responses you give to the questions asked inside the tender document. This may spell bad news for companies that have previously relied on simply bidding the lowest overall price, undercutting the competition in order to secure the contract. This is also, in essence, making the tender writing process more competitive: as tender writers we find ourselves competing against other tender writers across the country, and the results of the process show which companies have the best tender writers completing their tender documents and securing more work, rather than how it used to be, where the results would show which company was able to provide the service for the cheapest price, with no regard to environmental or sustainability issues.

Thankfully for our clients, we have a wealth of experience completing tenders across all industries and repeatedly produce the highest scoring tender submissions, securing our clients more business. The more the weighting of the award criteria continues to shift away from price, the more effective we can be in assisting you in the tender writing process.

For example, if a tender was split with 60% on price, we could only work towards gaining the highest possible percentage for the remaining 40% of the weighting, but as this shifts more towards 30% (or lower!) on price and 70% on other criteria, we will be able to have more of an influence over your chances for contract award.

So if you are having limited success in returning a strong, persuasive and, ultimately, high scoring tender document, and would like to increase your win rate, why not contact us today and we will be able to write your tender document for you to the highest possible standards and leave you to focus your efforts on your day-to-day tasks and competitively pricing your bid, to ensure that you do not lose out on price.