We score your bid before the evaluator does

You’ve written the bid. You’re not sure it wins.

You’ve done the work. Your team has spent two weeks pulling together responses, gathering evidence, formatting documents. The submission deadline is five days away.

But there’s a nagging feeling.

Are the answers actually hitting the criteria? Is the safeguarding section specific enough? Did anyone check the insurance certificate is still valid? Is that mobilisation plan going to score or just fill space?

That’s what the audit is for.

We read your draft the way an evaluator would. Not for grammar. Not for flow. For whether it answers what the buyer asked, with evidence they can score.

This is for you if:

• You write bids in-house and want a second opinion before you submit
• You’ve been scoring in the 60–75% range and can’t work out where the marks are going
• You’ve got a draft but not enough time to rewrite from scratch
• You want to build in-house capability but need to see where the gaps are first

We don’t proofread. We score.

Most bid reviews focus on spelling and readability. That’s not what loses tenders.

What loses tenders is answering the wrong question, asserting capability without evidence, and missing pass/fail requirements buried in the appendices.

Here’s what we check:

Scoring gaps. Does each answer directly respond to the evaluation criteria? If the buyer said they’ll score “demonstrated experience of delivering services of similar scale and complexity” and your answer talks about your company values, that’s a scoring gap. We flag every one.

Evidence holes. Claims without proof. “We have extensive experience” without a single contract name, date, or outcome figure. “Our staff are highly trained” without training data, completion rates, or qualification levels. We mark every unsupported claim and tell you what evidence to add.

Compliance risks. Expired certificates. Missing declarations. Wrong file formats. Word count breaches (some portals auto-reject on this). Unsigned forms. We check every pass/fail item against the submission requirements.

Weighting mismatches. A question worth 30% of the quality score gets the same 200 words as a question worth 5%. We flag where your effort doesn’t match the marks available.

Structural problems. Answers that bury the key point in paragraph three. Responses that repeat the question back instead of answering it. Method statements that describe what you do but not how or why it works.

The scoring difference in practice

The first is a claim. The second is evidence. Evaluators can only award marks for what they can verify against the criteria.

This matters across every question. A consistent pattern of 2s versus 4s on questions weighted at 10–20% each will determine the outcome of most tenders before the commercial scores are even counted. Our breakdown of common tender mistakes covers these patterns in detail.

What you get back

Not a vague summary. Not “consider strengthening section 3.” You get:

• Annotated draft with comments on every scored question, tied to the evaluation criteria
• Compliance checklist showing pass/fail status on every mandatory item
• Prioritised action list ranked by mark impact — fix the 30%-weighted question before the 5% one
• Rewrite notes for sections that need the most work, with specific guidance on what a stronger answer looks like
• Evidence prompts telling you exactly what data, examples, or documents to add and where

Optional: we can rewrite specific answers where the gap between your draft and a top-scoring response is significant. Priced separately, agreed upfront before we start.

How it works

When to use this

Best timing: 3–5 working days before your submission deadline. That gives you time to act on the feedback properly, not just scramble through last-minute edits.

Too early: If you’ve only outlined the answers, wait until the drafts are written. An audit works on content, not structure.

Too late: If you’re submitting tomorrow, we can do a compliance-only check — pass/fail items, attachments, portal rules — but not a full scoring review.

For building in-house capability: Running an audit on two or three consecutive tenders shows you the pattern. The same issues tend to come up repeatedly, which tells you exactly where to invest training time. Pairing this with our evidence library template gives you a system that improves over time.

FAQs