Chapter 22: Understanding How Clients Evaluate Tenders


Evaluation Criteria in Public Sector Procurement

Contract award on the basis of the most economically advantageous tender was discussed in Chapter 2. Identifying this tender involves the use of multiple evaluation criteria. The public sector procurement regulations give examples of criteria that may be applied - including quality, technical merit, aesthetic and functional characteristics, delivery date or period for completion, running costs, cost-effectiveness and so forth, as well as price. But they make it clear that this list is far from exhaustive and that an authority is able to make its own choice of criteria to suit the particular requirements of a contract, provided the criteria used are free from bias or discrimination, permit objective assessment, are related to the essential features of the contract in question and generate an economic advantage for the contracting authority.

It is evident also that terms such as 'quality' and 'technical merit' allow ample scope for interpretation through sub-criteria. For instance, an authority may assess 'technical merit' in terms of the structure and components of the work programme, the credentials of the people named in the bid, the extent to which the bid shows an innovative approach or addresses priority issues, the scope it offers for team working and partnering, its approach to managing the work and the risks inherent in the contract and its proposals for controlling and coordinating the input of subcontractors, among other factors. It is up to the authority to judge if it will obtain a better response by setting these factors out explicitly in the bid specification than by writing simply 'technical merit'. This point underlines how important it is for contractors to pay close attention to the detailed information in the bid specification and to research as thoroughly as possible the considerations that will shape the client's view of the practicality and value for money of a bid.

Whatever criteria are used to identify the most economically advantageous tender, they must be the same as those indicated in the contract notice or bid specification: as noted in Chapter 2, they have to be stated so far as possible in descending order of importance. Changes in the list of criteria or in their relative importance may indicate that the authority favours a particular bidder: they can be grounds for questioning the fairness of the award procedure. The bid specification will normally have included a warning to the effect that the authority will consider only bids that fully meet the evaluation criteria.

Generally the detailed evaluation will be preceded by a compliance check to verify that each bid conforms with the requirements set out in the bid specification. Points that may be covered in this check include:

  • consistency with the authority's instructions about the submission and delivery of bids: for example, use of the double-envelope system (Chapter 21);

  • presence of all the required categories of information;

  • confirmation either that the bid offers a conforming solution (where variant solutions are not allowed) or that a variant solution is accompanied by a conforming solution (where this requirement was indicated);

  • conformity with instructions about structure, use of templates, initialling of pages or CVs etc;

  • inclusion of formal statements, for example on legal, environmental or health and safety policies;

  • confirmation that the contractor's participation in the contract would not raise a conflict of interest or the possibility that its judgement in performing the work might be biased;

  • (where the bidder is a consortium) inclusion of letters confirming the association and designation of a lead company signed by all consortium members;

  • (where subcontracting is involved) inclusion of a statement from the bidder about the content and extent of the proposed subcontracting;

  • inclusion of a signed statement of availability from each expert proposed.

Tenders that are incomplete or that substantially fail to meet formal requirements are normally rejected at this stage. In some circumstances, evaluators may give bidders an opportunity to correct minor errors in the documentation or may request additional information from bidders.




Bids, Tenders and Proposals. Winning Business Through Best Practice
Bids, Tenders and Proposals: Winning Business through Best Practice (Bids, Tenders & Proposals: Winning Business Through Best)
ISBN: 0749454202
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 145
Authors: Harold Lewis

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