Work through a realistic tender — Technology & digital 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 — Replace a public-service booking system

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

A council needs residents to book appointments and staff to manage capacity across three sites. The procurement covers migration, implementation, support and eventual exit. A licence price does not describe the full solution.

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.

“99.9% available” is incomplete without the service hours, measurement point, exclusions and reporting period. Clarify whether planned maintenance counts and distinguish availability from the time to respond to an incident.

The legacy export is poorly documented. An extra migration rehearsal costs time, while skipping it can move the risk into live operations. Price the included data-cleaning assumptions and define how unexpected source-data problems are handled.

Item	Cost (currency units)
Implementation and migration	24,000
Three years of hosting and support	18,000
Training and exit provision	6,000
Total	48,000

Total cost is 48,000. To retain 20% of the selling price as profit, price is 48,000 ÷ 0.80 = 60,000. If “Additional migration rehearsal” adds 3,000 to cost without a price increase, profit becomes 9,000, or 15% of price. Preserving 20% would require 63,750, 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

Determine the applicable privacy, hosting, accessibility and cybersecurity obligations for this buyer and workload. WCAG is a technical standard; the tender and applicable law determine the required version and conformity. Verify cross-border data transfers, processor terms and any AI-specific obligations for features actually supplied.

Local technical schedules and security questionnaires. 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. Maintain a requirements-to-test matrix with expected results, observed results and an authorised decision on unresolved defects. A successful login does not prove data completeness, accessibility or performance under load.

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.