UK tender evaluation: how to assess an opportunity before you bid

Eligibility criteria are the qualifying conditions the authority sets before capability is even considered. They commonly include minimum annual turnover, employer's and public liability insurance levels, professional indemnity cover, financial standing checks and membership of a relevant framework or dynamic purchasing system.

Check these against evidence you can actually produce on the day of submission — the last filed accounts, the current certificate of insurance, the accreditation certificate with its expiry date. An intention to obtain cover is not eligibility.

Mandatory requirements are absolute. A single unmet mandatory item usually disqualifies a submission however strong the rest of it is, and no amount of quality writing recovers it. Typical examples include specific ISO certifications, safety accreditations, a registered office or operating base within a defined area, DBS arrangements for people-facing services, or a named qualification held by the proposed contract manager.

Separate the genuinely mandatory from the merely desirable. Authorities do not always label them clearly, and treating a desirable criterion as mandatory rules out opportunities you could have won.

The submission deadline is only one date. Build the full timetable before committing:

• the clarification question deadline, usually well before submission;
• site visits or mandatory briefings, often single fixed dates;
• presentation, interview or method-statement demonstration stages;
• the intended contract award and service commencement dates.

Then work backwards through internal approvals, pricing sign-off and any references or certificates you must request from third parties. A deadline that is technically achievable but leaves no room for internal review is a risk in itself.

Contract value, duration and extension options determine whether the opportunity is worth the effort. A very large contract relative to your turnover can raise financial standing concerns and stretch delivery; a very small one may not repay the cost of bidding.

Look carefully at the pricing schedule structure. Fixed prices across a long term without an indexation mechanism, unpriced call-off volumes, and pass-through cost assumptions all affect whether a nominally attractive value is genuinely profitable.

The published criteria tell you what the authority will actually reward. A 60/40 quality-to-price split demands a different bid strategy from an 80/20 price-led evaluation, and a substantial social value weighting requires commitments you may need time to arrange locally.

Read the sub-criteria and any scoring guidance. Where a question carries a specific word count and a defined scoring rubric, that is where writing effort earns marks — and where effort spent elsewhere does not.

Capability is about proof, not confidence. Can you evidence comparable contracts of similar scale, sector and complexity? Do you hold the accreditations the specification assumes? Do you have staff, plant, vehicles or premises within the required geography, or a credible plan to secure them within the mobilisation period?

Capacity is a separate question. Winning is only good news if you can deliver alongside existing commitments and any other bids in flight.

The terms and conditions often carry more risk than the specification. Areas worth reading in full include liability caps and any uncapped liabilities, liquidated damages and service credit regimes, indemnities, termination-for-convenience rights, payment terms, TUPE information and the completeness of any employee liability data, and the scope for the authority to vary volumes.

Where information is missing — an incomplete TUPE list, unstated volumes — that gap is a clarification question, not an assumption. Missing information should be recorded as unassessed rather than quietly rated as either safe or severe.

List the returnable documents early: selection questionnaire, method statements, pricing schedule in the required format, certificates, policies, insurance evidence, parent company guarantees. Note file formats, page limits and portal upload limits. Compliance failures at submission are avoidable and unforgiving.

Bring the findings together into one outcome and write down the reasoning. A simple three-way outcome works well: proceed, seek clarification or internal review first, or do not pursue. Recording why an opportunity was declined is as valuable as recording why one was pursued, particularly when the same authority retenders.

TenderMet automates much of this first pass — extracting requirements, deadlines, evaluation weightings and risks from the document, comparing them against a saved company profile, and producing a GO, REVIEW or NO-GO recommendation with an exportable report. See tender analysis software for how the extraction works, and AI tender analysis for the limits of automated review.

This page is general information about tender evaluation practice. It is not legal, procurement or financial advice, and it does not replace reading the tender documentation issued by the contracting authority.