The last step before you are ready to lodge your tender is to have it reviewed by a fresh set of eyes such as a colleague, partner, friend or third party and to evaluate your tender against the weighted criteria to ensure your response will be competitive.
Peer review (optional)
Getting a third-party such as your business advisor, an industry professional, Business Connect advisor, or someone with experience in winning tenders is not necessary but can help to ensure your tender complies with the agency’s requirements and the claims you have made about your business.
The nature of preparing tenders means you may be under pressure to deliver a high-quality document in a tight timeframe – regardless of whether it is a small or large tender. An independent peer review of your tender, before it is submitted, can help improve the quality of your response and puts you in the best position to win the bid.
Ideally this should be someone who understands tendering requirements as well as the subject matter. They can provide valuable feedback on ways to improve the content and the structure of your response. Having a new perspective can offer new insights with ideas that you may not have thought of.
A peer reviewer can help you by:
- Double checking you have not overlooked any requirements such as attaching documents
- Ensuring you have addressed the key elements such as addressing the evaluation criteria and relevant tender requirements, it is easy to read and score and you are offering the best value for money.
Evaluate your tender
The final step at this stage is to review your tender submission against the weighted criteria to make sure you have ticked all the boxes. While a peer review will help to ensure you have not overlooked anything, it is a good idea to do a final check to ensure everything has been addressed. Make sure you do this with plenty of time before the lodgement deadline in case there is additional information you need to chase up.
Review the weighted criteria to ensure you have addressed each one appropriately and have provided sufficient detail. This is essential to ensuring you have a compelling case to win the work. This will increase your chance of being the successful tenderer as the better your bid scores on each criteria, the better your overall score in the evaluation process compared to other bids.