Article
Write the tender for the person who has to score it
The person evaluating your tender is not looking for fine words. They are looking for answers they can award points to. Here is what makes a tender easier to read and easier to score.
It is easy to assume that a good bid is one that sounds impressive. But the person sitting down to evaluate your tender is not looking for fine words. They are looking for answers to what the competition asked, and they have to award points for what is actually written there. The easier you make that job, the better you are placed. Here we go through why that is, and share a few moves that can make a tender easier to evaluate.
The person reading your tender has a checklist and very little time
A tender in public procurement is not read as a story. It is assessed against the award criteria, criterion by criterion, often by several people who have to justify their scores in writing. We have written before about how the buyer turns your tender into points, and that process says a lot about how you should write.
The evaluator has to find your answer to each criterion, understand it, and be able to justify the score afterwards. An answer buried deep inside a paragraph about something else is harder to find and harder to award points for.
At the same time, it is easy to write the tender on your own terms: thorough and technically strong, but built the way the author thinks rather than the way the reader searches. A useful starting point is the opposite. Assume the reader has a checklist and little time, and make it easy to find the answer and tick the box.
Unclear language is a risk, quite literally
This is about more than style. Across the EEA the split is the same: the tenderer carries the risk of ambiguity in its own tender, while the contracting authority carries the risk of ambiguity in the tender documents. It follows from the principles of equal treatment and transparency in Article 18 of Directive 2014/24/EU, and from settled case law holding that the documents must be drafted so that all reasonably well informed and normally diligent tenderers can read them the same way. In Norway the first half is written into the procurement regulation in so many words: "The supplier bears the risk of ambiguity in the tender." The practical consequence is the same everywhere. The buyer cannot base the evaluation on anything other than what your tender actually says. If something is unclearly phrased, you carry the cost, in points or, at worst, through rejection.
Four moves that can make a tender easier to evaluate
1. Follow the structure and wording of the competition
If you are asked to describe how you solve something, it can pay to begin with exactly that. Use the same words and the same order the contracting authority uses in the criteria. If the criterion is called "Delivery capability and capacity", it can make sense to use that as a heading in the tender too, rather than "About us". That makes it easier for the reader to navigate, and each answer lands where the points are awarded. This is one of the patterns we described in our piece on tenders that win public contracts. Here it is about carrying it through in the text itself.
2. Conclusion first, explanation after
Specialists tend to build an argument and land the point at the end. In a tender it can pay to flip that. Start each sub-answer with the conclusion, for example "We staff the assignment with three senior advisers from day one", and let the reasoning follow. The reader gets the answer straight away, and can read on to gain confidence in it.
3. Specific beats general
A sentence like "We have long experience and high quality" can be hard to assess, quite simply because it cannot be verified. "We have delivered the same service to three municipalities over the past two years, with response times under two hours" gives the reader something concrete to weigh. Be specific, and show rather than claim. A simple test is to ask: can the claim in this sentence be verified? If not, it is worth considering rewriting or cutting it.
4. Cut the filler
Short sentences. One point at a time. Headings that say what the section is about. Go easy on internal abbreviations and in-house jargon, and remember that the evaluator does not necessarily share your professional vocabulary. If a word can be removed without the meaning disappearing, it is usually safe to remove it.
Test the tender the way it will be read
One thing that can be worth doing before you submit: give the response to a colleague who did not write it, together with the award criteria. Ask them to find the answer to each criterion and set a score on their own. Wherever your colleague hesitates, searches or asks, there is reason to think the evaluator will experience the same. Then you know where the text needs more work.
In closing
Plain language is not about making the tender simpler than it is. It is about making it easy to read and easy to award points to. And since it is the supplier who carries the risk of ambiguity in their own tender, clarity is also good risk management. It may be one of the cheapest ways to lift a tender: you do not need anything new to say, just to say it more clearly.
We at Cobrief are always happy to talk about how you can write tenders that are easy to award points to.