Before you decide where the hours go
How your tender answers actually get scored
Who gives you the mark? One person, holding your answer against one criterion, on a scale the buyer published before the tender went out. Everything below follows from that, including where your week should go.
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Try the arithmetic
Move the mark and watch the marks
An illustrative 0 to 5 scale, written for this page to show how the arithmetic works. The descriptors that count are the ones printed in your own tender documents.
The share of the total marks this question carries
0out of 5 No answer
What the answer looks like. Nothing was submitted, or what was submitted does not address the question.
What moves it up. Answer the question that was asked, under its own heading.
1out of 5 Serious gaps
What the answer looks like. The answer touches the question but leaves out most of what it asked for, and gives the evaluator little reason to believe it.
What moves it up. Cover every part of the criterion, in the order the buyer listed them.
2out of 5 Limited
What the answer looks like. The answer covers some of the requirement in general terms. Most of it is promise rather than method.
What moves it up. Replace each promise with the method behind it: who does it, how, and how often.
3out of 5 Meets the requirement
What the answer looks like. The answer covers what was asked, with a workable method, but little that is specific to this contract or checkable by the evaluator.
What moves it up. Make it specific to this buyer, and attach the evidence an evaluator could check.
4out of 5 Good
What the answer looks like. A specific, evidenced answer that covers the criterion, with minor gaps or claims the evaluator has to take on trust.
What moves it up. Close the last gaps, and turn each remaining claim into something the evaluator can check.
5out of 5 Excellent
What the answer looks like. Every part of the criterion is answered for this contract, and every claim is backed by evidence the evaluator can check.
What moves it up. Nothing to move. Check it still fits the word limit and still answers the criterion as worded.
This answer earns 18 of the 30 marks it carries, out of a hundred for the whole tender, and leaves 12 on the table.
Tender Evaluation Scorecard
Illustrative scoring model. Demonstrates weighted procurement calculations without asserting actual contract award probabilities.
For each criterion, divide the selected grade by the highest grade, then multiply by its weighting. Add the contributions. Your actual tender may use a different method.
- 40 per cent
- Technical Quality and Operational Delivery
- 30 per cent
- Implementation Methodology and Mobilisation
- 20 per cent
- Social Value and Community Outcomes
- 10 per cent
- Business Continuity and Safeguarding
Use the criteria and assessment method in your own tender documents.
Tender Evaluation Scorecard
Illustrative scoring model. Demonstrates weighted procurement calculations without asserting actual contract award probabilities.
Service methodology, staffing ratios, governance structure and delivery standards
60-day transition timeline, handover protocols and operational risk management
Local employment, supply chain sustainability and measurable apprenticeship commitments
Escalation procedures, data protection compliance and continuous safeguarding audits
Our fixed-fee bid review reads your answers cold against the buyer's scoring rubric and flags evidence gaps before the deadline.
What the tender documents already tell you
- The criteria. The named things being marked, in the buyer's own words. Quality, social value, delivery, price and mobilisation, which is how you would get the contract up and running in the first weeks, are common headings, and the names that matter are the ones in your own tender documents.
- The weightings. How the total marks are split between those criteria, usually as percentages that add to a hundred.
- The scale. How each individual answer is scored, and what a mark on that scale is supposed to mean. Many schemes publish a written descriptor for each point.
Find all three before you write anything. If any of them isn't in the documents, that's a clarification question, and asking it early is free. The tender compliance checklist carries the deadline that governs it.
Weighting decides where your hours go
The section people find easiest to write is often the one carrying the fewest marks, and effort drifts towards it unless somebody stops it.
Take a scheme, invented here purely to show the arithmetic, that puts 60 of its marks on quality and 40 on price, and splits the quality marks across four questions of 15 each. Two of those questions are about things you do every day. Two are about things you'd have to go and evidence.
The two easy ones are worth 30 marks between them and will take a morning. The two hard ones are worth the same 30 and will take a week. A plan that spends the week on the easy pair loses half the quality marks.
The one-page thing worth building first
Put the criteria in a column, the weighting beside each, and your own honest guess at how you'd score today beside that. The gaps sort themselves into order without you having to decide anything.
Worked comparative scoring: Approach A against Approach B
To see how an evaluator marks two bids against the same criterion, compare these two fictional responses to a quality and escalation question carrying 25 percent of the marks.
| Approach A (Generic, Score 2/5) | Approach B (Evidenced, Score 5/5) | |
|---|---|---|
| Method summary | Generic policy statement without named governance or verifiable SLAs | Specific methodology, named accountable director, logged KPIs, audit-backed case precedent |
| Sample response excerpt | Fictional excerpt: We take quality seriously and follow our quality policy. Staff report problems to management, who resolve them promptly. We keep records and review our performance to ensure customer satisfaction. | Fictional excerpt: Contract Director Alex Morgan is accountable for quality and escalation. The contract mobilisation schedule names the operational lead and deputy, and the attached SLA matrix defines acknowledgement and resolution deadlines by severity. Each issue receives an owner, severity, deadline and timestamped decision history in the issue register. Missed SLA deadlines escalate to the director and the authority's contract lead. KPI reports link response and resolution performance to the underlying records. Our fictional evidence pack includes the ISO 9001 governance audit, a recent comparable public sector contract audit and its corrective-action closure records. The authority can trace each reported KPI to the issue, action, approval and closure evidence. |
| Evaluator rationale | Lacks named operational lead, response SLAs, or evidence of recent contract audits. | Fully evidenced operating procedure, explicit escalation paths, audited ISO 9001 governance. |
| Score and marks earned | Score: 2 out of 5 (10 percent of total marks earned) | Score: 5 out of 5 (25 percent of total marks earned) |
Fictional teaching examples. Scores illustrate this rubric and do not guarantee a tender outcome. Tender specific procurement documents govern final evaluation.
What a low mark usually means
On most published scales, the difference between a middle mark and a top mark isn't better prose. It's whether the answer is specific to this contract, whether it is evidenced, and whether it covers everything the criterion asked for.
That's why a generic answer scores in the middle at best. The government's own advice to suppliers is to avoid submitting previously successful or generic tender responses, and to tailor your answers to the organisation. That is most of the craft of writing the method statement.
It also asks for measurable outcomes and buyer-specific benefits. An evaluator who has to take a claim on trust will mark it lower than one they can check, and they'll be right to.
Price is scored too, and usually separately
Price normally carries its own share of the marks and its own formula, printed in the tender documents. Read the formula before you set a price, because it decides how much a given reduction is actually worth to you.
Where do you find all this?
In the tender documents themselves, reached through the notice on Find a Tender, the government's own website for public contract notices, which costs nothing to search. What that service is and when it changed are on the page about the Procurement Act 2023.
If a criterion or a weighting is missing from what you've been sent, ask through the clarification process rather than guessing. Your guess and the evaluator's scheme are unlikely to match.
What to do with the scheme once you've got it
- Write the criterion above each answer, in the buyer's words, and leave it there until the day you submit.
- Put the weighting beside it, and plan your hours against the weighting rather than against the word count.
- For every claim, name the evidence you'd point to if an evaluator asked. If there isn't one, that's the work.
- Have somebody who didn't write it mark each answer against its own criterion before it goes.
That last step is what a bid review does for a fixed fee, and it's the one most likely to get squeezed out by the deadline. If the answers themselves need writing, that is tender writing for companies.
The last step is the one the deadline eats
Or call 07984 845440, or email [email protected].