Bid/no-bid scorecard for engineering tenders
A bid/no-bid scorecard turns the decision to pursue a tender into a short, weighted assessment made in the first days of the tender period, so the team commits estimating effort by criteria rather than by reflex. Score the opportunity against six weighted criteria. Apply thresholds the team agreed before any tender was on the table.
Record the outcome either way, including the declines. The scorecard itself takes minutes; what feeds it is the first-pass read of the conditions of tender, and that reading is the part you can hand to Elora Grid so the team scores from evidence rather than memory.
Why score the decision instead of just deciding?
Because the most expensive tenders are the ones a team was never going to win but priced anyway. Pursuing every open tender feels like coverage. In practice it spreads the estimating effort thin across low-probability bids and starves the winnable ones.
A scorecard does not remove judgment; it forces the judgment to be stated. Each criterion gets a score against weights agreed once as a team standard, and the numbers make any disagreement visible while there is still time to argue about it.
What belongs on the scorecard?
Six criteria cover the decision for most engineering tenders: the client relationship, the fit of the scope to what you engineer and deliver well, the real capacity to honour the programme if you win, the commercial terms held in the conditions, the competitive field, and the strategic value of winning beyond this one project.
Weight them once, as a standing team decision, so scores are comparable from tender to tender. The commercial terms row is the one that punishes guessing: it depends on actually finding the validity, liquidated damages, security and precedence clauses in the pack.
How do you set the thresholds?
Agree the thresholds before scoring anything, as a standing rule. Above the upper threshold, the tender is pursued. Below the lower one, it is declined. Between the two, it is pursued only with named conditions: a partner secured by a date, or a clarification answered acceptably.
Deciding the thresholds in the heat of a live tender defeats the purpose. The thresholds are the policy; the scorecard is only the measurement.
The six criteria
| Criterion | What you are really asking |
|---|---|
| Client and relationship | Do we know the client, their evaluators and how they buy? |
| Scope fit | Is this the work we engineer and deliver well, or adjacent to it? |
| Capacity to deliver | Can engineering and delivery honour the programme if we win? |
| Commercial terms | What do the conditions hold on LDs, security, validity and payment? |
| Competition | Who else will bid, and is there an incumbent? |
| Strategic value | Does winning open a market or client we want, beyond this project? |
- 01Score in the first days, not the first hour. Complete the scorecard after the first-pass read of the conditions of tender and the scope, so the commercial terms row is evidence, not instinct.
- 02Use the standing weights. Weight the six criteria once as a team standard, so scores are comparable across tenders and quarters.
- 03Apply the agreed thresholds. Pursue, decline, or pursue with named conditions; the thresholds were agreed in advance, so the score is the decision's evidence, not its replacement.
- 04Record every decision, including declines. The record of what you declined and why is what makes next quarter's decisions faster and honester.
- 05Rescore when the tender materially changes. A re-issue that moves the scope, the terms or the programme re-opens the decision; a score from the original issue does not carry forward automatically.
Common questions
When should the bid/no-bid decision be made?
In the first days of the tender period, after a first-pass read of the conditions of tender and the scope, and it should be revisited if a re-issue materially changes either. Deciding on day zero scores instinct; deciding in week three wastes the estimating effort the scorecard exists to protect.
Who owns the decision?
The scorecard informs; a named owner decides. Keep the decision with one accountable person and use the scores to make the reasoning explicit, not to outsource it.
What feeds the commercial terms row?
The actual clauses: tender validity, liquidated damages, security and bank guarantees, payment terms and the order of precedence. Elora Grid reads the pack and returns each answer cited to its document and page, so the row is scored from evidence rather than memory.