Insights
Practical guidance on Government tender evaluation, drawn from hundreds of competitive tender evaluations chaired.
Bidding everything is the most expensive habit in tendering. Eight questions that decide whether this tender is worth your week.
Panels know CVs are recycled. What they're looking for is the join between the person and this project — and most submissions never make it.
Local content, apprentices, Aboriginal participation, sustainability. These are deliverables criteria wearing a values heading — and they're scored like it.
A debrief won't give you the scoresheet, but it will tell you how your submission read. The questions worth asking, and the ones that waste it.
What makes a tender non-conforming, what usually happens next, and how to offer an alternative without putting your submission at risk.
Addenda arrive mid-bid, get acknowledged on a form, and never reach the content. Here's how to handle them so they don't cost you the tender.
Methodology is usually the highest-weighted criterion and the widest scoring spread. Here's what separates a specific methodology from a polished generic one.
Panels can't score an assertion any higher than the middle of the band. Here's how to turn claims into evidence a panel can defend.
The structure of your tender response is already written — it's in the request for tender. Here's how to build it out, section by section.
Capable contractors lose tenders for reasons that have nothing to do with capability. Seven failures that show up again and again in evaluation.
Most government tender criteria fall into five families. Here's what a panel is assessing in each one — and the mistake that costs points every time.
A former Government Procurement Manager explains what happens to your submission after you lodge it — conformance, independent scoring, moderation and the recommendation.
Most bids fail long before submission — in the review that never happened. Here's how to run an internal tender review that mirrors how an evaluation panel actually scores your response.
The maths of weighted evaluation, from someone who's chaired the panels: why the cheapest bid so often ranks last, and what actually moves rankings.
Quality, environmental and safety plans aren't attachments — they're pass/fail gates and scored evidence. Here's what the panel is actually checking.
What actually happens to your tender after you lodge it? A former evaluation chair walks through the process most tenderers never see.