How tenders are scored: read the marking scheme before you write

Under the Procurement Act 2023, the scheme is not hidden. The government’s guidance on assessing competitive tenders says award criteria must be “sufficiently clear, measurable and specific”. The buyer must set out the relative importance of every criterion, by weighting or by ranking, and publish an assessment methodology that sets out how tenders will be assessed, including any scoring matrices evaluators will use.

So before anyone drafts, three things should be on one page: the weight of each question, the scale it is scored on, and the words that describe each point on that scale.

Take Qualifications Wales’s tender for planned and reactive facilities management at its Newport office, published on Find a Tender as notice 099768-2026. Quality is 60% of the score and price 40%. There are seven quality items, each scored from 0 to 5, with no minimum score. One of them, account management, carries 30 of the 100 quality points on its own; three items together (account management, provision of service and service levels) carry 55.

The scale runs from 0, “not acceptable”, to 5, “high confidence”. The descriptors are the useful part. A 4 needs evidence that is sufficient, convincing and credible. A 5 needs evidence that is consistent, comprehensive, compelling, fully relevant and highly credible. A 3 has minor gaps, or is in small part unconvincing.

Read like that, the scheme tells you where to spend effort: on the 30-point question before the 5-point one, and on evidence rather than description everywhere. Other buyers use other scales; the Home Office, for example, says its scale is often 0 to 4. The method is the same.

1. Split the question into its parts. The service-levels question in that tender asks for ten separate things, from helpdesk arrangements to how assets outside the SFG20 standard are maintained. Each is a place to win or lose marks.
2. Give each part a heading, in the order asked. An evaluator working through a long day should be able to tick each element off without searching.
3. Write down the evidence you have for each part before writing any prose: numbers, names, systems, dates, a current contract that shows it working. Gaps show up here, while there is still time to fill them.
4. Share out the words by weight. If no word limits are set, as in this tender, set your own caps in proportion to each item’s points.
5. Self-score honestly against the descriptors when the draft is done. If you cannot point to the evidence that makes it a 4, it is probably a 3, and you now know what to fix.

The difference between a 3 and a 5 is rarely style. It is specifics. Compare two ways of saying the same thing, from a sample answer we wrote for a fictional supplier (the generic lines are invented for contrast):

The second column gives an evaluator something to score. The first gives them something to read.

• Cross-referring. Many tenders say evaluators mark only what is in each answer box. “See our response to 2a” scores nothing in 2d.
• Qualifying the requirement. Some tenders say answers that add conditions to the buyer’s requirements may be disregarded. Where a requirement is unclear, ask a clarification question, or commit to the stricter reading.
• Attachments the buyer did not ask for. If the template says no attachments, a table belongs inside the answer, not in an appendix nobody opens.

Put the weights, the scale and the descriptors on one page, and keep it next to the draft until submission. It is the cheapest hour in the whole bid. And before that hour, check the pass/fail questions: a bid that fails one is never scored at all (see pass/fail questions in tenders).

1. Procurement Act 2023 guidance: Assessing Competitive Tenders (paras 10, 11, 13, 20). www.gov.uk/government/publications/procurement-act-2023-guidance-documents-procure-phase/assessing-competitive-tenders-html
2. Home Office SME/VCSE public procurement bid pack (scoring scale). www.gov.uk/government/publications/smevcse-public-procurement-bid-pack
3. Qualifications Wales, QW Planned and Reactive Facilities Management Services, ref. QWL262702: Invitation to Tender 3.5, 3.6, 5.4, 5.9–5.11 and Response Template 2, published on Sell2Wales. www.find-tender.service.gov.uk/Notice/099768-2026

Read on 23 October 2026. Guidance and tender documents change; check the current version before relying on any detail. Examples that use a fictional supplier say so.