Competitive dialogue is the procurement route for contracts too complex to specify upfront. Where a buyer knows the outcome it needs but not the solution, it can’t just publish a fixed spec and ask for prices — so it talks to bidders first, develops the solution with...
The most expensive bids are the ones you should never have written. Every tender you pursue consumes time, your best people, and the focus you could have spent on a winnable opportunity. A disciplined bid/no-bid decision — made early, scored honestly, and acted on —...
The clarification process is one of the most underused tools in public bidding. Most suppliers either ignore it or fire off questions that hand their thinking to competitors. Used well, it removes the ambiguity that loses marks and occasionally reshapes a tender in...
Social value has gone from a tick-box afterthought to a scored, sometimes decisive, part of a public bid. Teams that still treat it as a closing paragraph about “giving back to the community” are leaving marks — occasionally the winning margin — on the table. Here’s...
Innovation is one of the most requested — and most poorly scored — criteria in public bidding. Suppliers reach for the word, sprinkle in “cutting-edge” and “transformational,” and score in the middle of the band, because to an evaluator those are claims, not...
