Therefore, a bid evaluation team needs to be set up. It should be identified and appointed during the ITT preparation so that all members are aware of what is being sought and how it is going to be evaluated. The team must be structured to represent the interests involved, but its size must be controlled so that it is manageable. Leadership must be clearly defined, and every member of the team must be fully aware of their role.
Departmental representation must be minimised. Team members should speak for their departments, bringing a co-ordinated view to the process.
Establishing evaluation criteria
Whatever service is being tendered, each will have its own detailed requirements, its own performance indicators and measurement needs against which evaluation criteria are prepared.
However, across the whole range of service provision there is one common requirement – the need for effective management. In many cases the technical and operational qualities that are brought to the provision of services are closely comparable across a wide range of service providers. The ingredient that makes one provider better than another, or better than the rest, is frequently the quality of the management. After all, the removal of unnecessary responsibilities from the purchaser's management is a prime reason for outsourcing.
What is often being purchased in a competitive tender is not necessarily the details of the service itself, but a new or different management focus. This assumes even greater prominence when one is contracting in a partnering environment.
It follows that a crucial aspect of preparing evaluation criteria is defining the management needs of the service.
What needs to be evaluated?
The quality of the management is critical. The purchaser must satisfy itself that the management it is purchasing is capable of doing the job required. The ITT is the first step in the process. If there is one certainty in the tender evaluation process it is that you cannot appoint any 'partner' on the basis of the written tender alone. It is essential that post tender interviews are conducted and, if this has not been done at the pre-qualification stage, references taken before any firm decision is made.
The ITT must require tenderers to provide a minimum level of information about their organisation, its structure, and the roles and responsibilities of key members of the management and implementation teams. The following points should be defined:
The provision of this information is mandatory. Any tender which fails to provide answers to all questions, without good reason and the agreement of the purchaser, should be excluded from consideration and the ITT must make that clear.
Evaluation against the criteria
Having created the detailed criteria and the mandatory questionnaire, it is a relatively simple step to evaluating the tenders against them, but beware of complacency. This is what the team needs to be doing during the period when the tenders are being prepared.
It is essential that the criteria are prepared in a manner that permits objective evaluation. Subjective elements cannot be ruled out, but they should be concentrated in the interview process and eliminated from the basic evaluation measures. Most people will be familiar with the concept of a score sheet (see right) where the tenders are scored against the criteria and the evaluation is developed further with the highest scoring tenderer(s). It is vital, however, that the purchaser goes through a process of prioritising the evaluation criteria to determine which of them are the most important to the organisation. Weightings should be given to them so that the scores for the most important aspects assume a greater impact in the evaluation process. Involvement of the evaluation team is fundamental to the success of this approach. The criteria should have been developed and agreed by the team and the score sheet and the weightings likewise.
The evaluation process
The evaluation team also plays a major part in establishing the transparency of the competitive tendering process to show it as being even-handed, systematic and thorough. Once the tenders have been received and processed through whatever opening procedures are appropriate, they should ideally be distributed to all members of the evaluation team, who will have been properly briefed on the commercial confidentiality of tender information. Accompanying the tenders should be a copy of the agreed evaluation score sheet and each team member should be required to complete the evaluation scores for each tender, independently of the other members of the team. A team meeting should then determine the results of that evaluation stage and consider the next move.
What do post tender interviews look for?
Often, post tender interviews will lead naturally to an element of negotiation, which needs to be conducted in accordance with the relevant policy and procedural requirements of the organisation. The purpose is to consider what the interviews should achieve in terms of clarifying, confirming and substantiating the claims made in the submitted tenders.
The 'paper' evaluation and team meetings stages will have gone a long way to enable the purchaser to determine whether the tenderers are capable of delivering the service required. The interviews should be designed to corroborate that as far as possible and to start to make assessments about the tenderers' personnel and organisation that can only be made as a result of face-to-face contact.
Probably the most important subjective factor in evaluating tenders is trying to assess whether the purchaser's management and the tenderers' management could work together. Much of the contact between tenderers and purchaser during the tender period will have been conducted for the tenderers by sales and/or marketing managers and directors. In the evaluation phase the purchaser must recognise that the provision of the service post contract will be effected by operational and technical personnel and managers. It is vital that tenderers invited to post tender interview are instructed to include the key personnel who would provide and manage the service.
Another way in which the interviews can assist the purchaser in decision-making is to structure and maintain them to strict timetables. Give each bidder a set time in which to make its opening presentation; declare in advance what length the interview will be and what format it will take. Then compare the performance of the tenderers in the preparation they have made for the interview. A well organised bidder will adhere to time limits placed on presentation and will have a well organised team with clearly defined roles. Most importantly for the purchaser, he/she will be able to address questions to the key managers and assess how they deal with them.
Evaluation criteria
- Technical ability
- Experience
- Management structure
- Financial stability
- Health & safety
- Customer service
- Credibility
- Method statement
- Pricing
Scoring system
1 Totally unacceptable: meets none of our requirements6 Fair : does not quite meet our requirements but might be value for money
7 Good: meets our needs
8 Very good: exceeds our needs and adds value
9 Excellent: adds significant value
10 Superb: provides a service in excess of our needs – question value for money
Source
The Facilities Business
Postscript
David Pearson is managing partner of DJP Consultancy, which advises on contract and purchashing management. He can be contacted on: djpconsultancy@btinternet.com
