Work through a realistic tender — Consulting & professional services

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to defend a bid decision and prepare a consistent submission.

Common to all countries

Make a decision that survives delivery

A bid review has three separate gates: admissibility, a credible route to a competitive score, and the ability to deliver at an acceptable return. A high score cannot cure an inadmissible offer; a technically possible offer can still be commercially unsound. Give each unresolved issue an owner and a decision deadline before the submission cut-off.

Assemble the final response from the controlled requirements and evidence registers. Check names, totals, document versions, signatures, portal fields and uploaded files. Use an independent read-through to find contradictions between the method, staffing and price. After a permitted test of the submission workflow, allow time for the actual upload and retain the receipt. A finished PDF on your computer is not a submitted offer.

Worked example — Review a public service and transfer a method

This is a fictional teaching case. Quantities, prices and contractual conditions below are assumptions for the exercise, not legal requirements or market benchmarks.

An authority commissions a review of its application-handling process and a practical improvement plan. It needs a defensible diagnosis and a method staff can reuse. A long report is not by itself a useful outcome.

Review position. The team can deliver the base requirement, but one clarification remains open and the extra cost below is not included in its original price. Submission is five working days away; this is a case assumption.

“Consult all stakeholders” gives no population, number of interviews or access arrangements. Ask for expected coverage and a sampling decision before committing to a fixed fee.

Required records arrive three weeks late. Replan dependent tasks and use the contract’s notification and change process. Quietly replacing missing evidence with assumptions can undermine both conclusions and acceptance.

Item	Cost (currency units)
Expert analysis	24,000
Research and workshops	8,000
Quality review and coordination	8,000
Total	40,000

Total cost is 40,000. To retain 20% of the selling price as profit, price is 40,000 ÷ 0.80 = 50,000. If “Additional evidence collection” adds 4,000 to cost without a price increase, profit becomes 6,000, or 12% of price. Preserving 20% would require 55,000, only where the procurement permits that price. A cost increase does not automatically entitle the supplier to a contract price increase.

Country specific — what to verify

Check conflict-of-interest and independence rules, professional licensing where the activity is regulated, confidentiality, data handling and ownership of outputs. Time-based and deliverable-based payment models create different evidence requirements; use the actual contract.

Local professional-service response schedules. Use the destination-country module and the actual tender pack. The sources below are references with their own scope; they do not form a single worldwide regime. For the general method, revisit the foundations.

Put it into practice

Prepare a final review with four decisions: admissibility, clarification, return and submission. State the conditions for a yes and the conditions requiring a no. Produce three response headings linked to requirements.

Model answer

Model decision: conditional bid, not immediate approval. Obtain the official clarification, confirm evidence and resources, then decide the price or withdraw before submission. Do not conceal non-compliance in a prohibited qualification. The three response sections are understanding the need, method and resources, then controls and acceptance. Use a deliverables checklist linked to the terms of reference, a comments log and an agreed resolution record. Assess transfer through staff use of the tools, not only attendance at a presentation.

Keep this worksheet in your working file. The quiz below checks the lesson’s decisions; passing it is neither a professional qualification nor a guarantee of an award.