Public tenders: How the buyer evaluates your proposal

Evaluated by the buyer

To understand how public and private buyers evaluate proposals and select suppliers, it is important to know the concepts of "award criteria" and "qualification requirements." These elements are crucial for ensuring that the procurement process is transparent and fair. By understanding how they work, suppliers can improve their proposals and increase their chances of winning.

Here we share some simple explanations of how it all fits together. At the very bottom, we also show you how easily Cobrief finds and interprets criteria and requirements for you using AI.

Award criteria

Award criteria refer to the factors used to evaluate and rank proposals in a tender competition. A criterion can be, for example, price, quality, delivery time, understanding of the assignment, or climate and environmental impact. The award criteria are the specific and objective measures that buyers use to assess which proposal offers the best overall value, not necessarily just the one with the lowest price. Often the criteria are weighted with a percentage each, e.g., price weighted at 30%, quality weighted at 40%, and climate and the environment weighted at 30%.****

Example: Imagine a municipality announces a tender competition to build a new school. To select the best proposal, they evaluate factors such as price (the cost of building the school), quality (durability of materials and design), delivery time (how quickly the project can be completed), and climate and environmental impact (emissions from transport and use of environmentally friendly materials). The municipality selects the proposal that offers the best overall value, based on these criteria.

Qualification requirements

Qualification requirements are the specifications or conditions that a supplier must meet to be considered in a tender competition. This can include technical specifications and other necessary attributes that the product or service must have. The requirements are the minimum criteria that must be met for a proposal to be further considered in the evaluation process.

Example: Imagine a municipality announces a tender competition to build a new school. To ensure that suppliers have the necessary competence and capacity, they set qualification requirements. This can include requirements for previous experience with similar projects (that the supplier has built schools before), financial stability (that the supplier has enough resources to complete the project), technical competence (that the supplier has the necessary skills and equipment), and quality assurance systems (that the supplier has procedures to ensure high quality in the work). Only suppliers who meet these requirements will be further considered in the competition.

Cobrief simplifies the interpretation

It can often be difficult to understand the tender, but it doesn't have to be that way. Our AI goes through the tender and gives you a quick overview of award criteria and requirements with sources, in a language you understand. The criteria and sources are clickable for more information -- so you can quickly decide whether to respond to the tender. In the example below, we have used a tender for the delivery of commercial and short films.