4.3 Selecting a tender

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It’s your decision

All clients want to select the best contractor to carry out their projects. The decision as to which contractor to choose will have long-lasting effects: you will be working together for several months while the route is being built; you will want the team to carry out any remedial repairs for up to a year after completion; and the path will be used and maintained for 20 years or more. Selecting the right team is all about balancing the short-term demands of your organisation (budget, contract rules, desire to use a local contractor) with the long-term management demands of the site (quality, repairs and an appropriate design).

You will have your own vision of what the job will look like when it is complete, and an estimate of cost. Do not assume that every contractor shares the same view – there will be a variety of designs and ways of delivering them. Not every contractor will build the same path from the same plans!

It is difficult to imagine what the job will look like from the information provided by each contractor. Choosing the right team involves understanding your potential contractors and how they perform. Meet with new contractors, visit their sites and speak to other clients. If a contractor provides all the information you have asked for but you have no idea how they will deliver this job, then they have not presented their bid well. Do not dismiss their bid, but spend time finding out how they envisage the job, and encourage them to provide this information for future jobs.

If necessary, consult with others over your recommendation, and be sure to follow your organisation’s procurement procedures. But, ultimately, you are the manager and know the needs of your site, and the decision is yours. Take advice but do not let others make the decision for you.

Selecting a tender: a five-step process

Selecting the best tender for your job involves following a rigorous process of information comparison and decision-making. Go through each step – do not just look at the ‘bottom line’ and plump for the cheapest! If you have already prepared a full specification, held a site meeting and encouraged the contractors to provide full responses, the tender selection process should take only 2–3 hours. If you have skimped on preparation and the responses are patchy, it could take a lot longer.

Stage in the process
Information needed
Decisions
Source of advice
Step 1
Sealed bids submitted and a clock.
What bids have arrived?
Administrator to check-in bids.
Step 2
Your specification and information checklist: look only at the information submitted with each bid.
Do they contain everything you needed?
Second person present, advice from quality surveyor or specialists.
Step 3
Information from past work for you and other clients, plus the project plan for each team.
How do the bids compare?
Other clients
Specialist safety or
path officer
Step 4
Use only the notes you have made on each bid, backed up with a second opinion.
Which is your preferred contractor?
Confirm your decision with budget holder.
Step 5
Feedback to contractors based on their performance, but no specific information from other companies’ bids.
Could future bids be better?
Speak to all bidders.
Refer to trainers or UPAG for assistance.

At each stage of the process you must decide whether you have enough information to make a good decision. If you do not have the necessary information, you must decide whether to delay the decision and seek extra information from the bidders or disregard a poorly prepared submission. This will depend on the number of bidders you have, the time available and the type of information missing. Do not make a decision based on incomplete information. It is good practice to evaluate all competent submissions fully and only make a final selection at Step 4 – do not knock them out one by one until you have only one left.

Record your observations and decisions on each bid, at each stage, on a contract selection form.

Step 1: What bids have arrived?

The assessment of tenders should be treated with care and attention and in accordance with the written procedure agreed by your organisation. It is useful to give a summary of your procedure to project funders and contractors. Procedures will vary between organisations, but certain protocols will be similar. It is good practice for the client organisation to issue a return address label identifying the correspondence as a tender document but not the company replying. Tenders should be kept in a safe and secure location from time of receipt to the time of opening and acceptance of the successful tender.

The contract will have stated a date and time by which tenders should be received. Date stamp all bids when they arrive in the office, and again when they are opened. Keep a written contract record, noting when each bid is received and opened, and by whom. If any tenders are received after the deadline or are received by phone or fax then this should be noted on the summary sheet. Also, contractors who have failed to respond should be noted as no submission, alongside any reason they have given for declining to tender.

It is good practice for two people to be present when tenders are opened. And, of course, neither should have any links or interest in any of the companies involved.

Step 2: Do they contain everything you need?

It is useful to use a summary sheet to collate the key information contained in each tender. Check that all the information requested in the brief has been provided in each contractor’s bid. First, check that all the background information has been submitted – this is best done annually by each approved contractor and kept on file. Make sure each company has provided up-to-date details, including:

Next, look at all the basic information provided in the bid that is specific to the contract – this will include:

Confirm that all bids include the basic information you need. If not, ask for additional or missing information. The client should not discuss financial information from any bid with any of the other contractors, although it is quite acceptable to discuss technical issues and seek clarification. You must not go back to contractors and seek to ‘biddown’ for a lower price than the one put forward. If you do need additional financial information, consider whether it will make a major difference to the overall price. If it is likely to be less than 10% of total costs, make a selection based on what you know and adjust the contract later. If it is likely to be more than 10%, you will need to ask all the contractors to re-bid, giving them a revised specification and time to re-submit.

Look at the other information that bidders have provided, often in the form of a brief project plan or method statement. This often reveals most about how they have interpreted your specification, and whether they have grasped what is needed for this particular site. A description of the techniques that they plan to use will also reveal whether they have taken into account the sensitivity of the site and whether they are using up-to-date techniques and equipment.

Summarise the information received, with brief notes on its adequacy, on a checklist. Do not accept tenders that are incomplete, and proceed to the evaluation of tenders only when you have all the information you need.

Step 3: How do the bids compare?

You are looking for quality across the whole job. It is important to appreciate that ‘quality’ is not just about the physical build of the project. Although solid and durable construction to a high standard is obviously important, it should not be the sole determinant. ‘Quality’ at its simplest is the bid that most closely meets the needs described in your specification: the needs of users, the site and you, the client. It is up to you to decide which bid most closely meets these needs.

Quality in timing the work and dealing with the public, as well as quality in building, is the most technically difficult part of the specification. This requires consistency and an ability by the contractor to coordinate and manage the different parts of the job, and not get lost in the site work.

It is often helpful to divide the evaluation of tenders into three areas: commercial security, management competence and technical ability.

Evaluation of commercial security considers whether each bidder has the resources to comply with the contract:

Evaluation of management competence considers the firm’s ability to support and manage the site team and communicate with the client and public:

Evaluation of technical ability considers the skills of the proposed team to undertake the work, their training, expertise, equipment and ability to innovate:

All these criteria should be investigated and contractors scored or ranked. Some information will be gleaned from previous experience of the contractors involved; however, it is important that information is current. If they have not worked for you recently, speak to other competent contract managers who have had recent experience of them.

Record your observations on each contractor on a contract selection record sheet.

Step 4: Which is your preferred contractor?

Selecting the preferred contractor for the job should now be fairly straightforward: by comparing prices submitted with your own notes on the abilities of each company, a clear winner often stands out. If several teams are equally competent and you expect each to perform the work to a high standard, then accept the lowest priced tender if all related documents are satisfactory.

If there are several bids within ±10% of your own budget estimate, then look carefully at which team you consider to be best suited to the job. Choose the best-quality team within the price ‘bracket’.

Quotes that were more than 15% below your estimate are often wrongly estimated and could result in either a poorly performed job or a bankrupt contractor. Consider offering the contractors the opportunity to reconsider their bids, and disregard those that are not revised.

If the accepted tender is not the lowest priced, it is good practice to refer your decision for confirmation within your organisation along with your reasons for selecting the best contractor.

Write to all contractors to let them know whether or not they have been awarded the work. For most tenders, a letter of confirmation is all that is required as the tender papers contain all the necessary contract details. Some forms of tender may require a formal contract to be signed.

Step 5: Could future bids be better?

Having invested so much time in preparing a bid, it is good practice to give contractors advice on their tender whether they were successful or not. It is always useful to receive constructive criticism, and sharing this information can help improve the quality of future tenders.

Clients should not provide detailed financial information and should not make direct reference to competing companies’ tenders. Feedback should be positive and suggestions should be made of how the contractor could increase the chance of submitting a successful bid in the future.

Feedback from the client to contractors should include the following: price, quality of tender, future prospects.

Selecting tenders: some good practice pointers

All that remains is to agree a start date for the work with the successful contractor, and agree a list of the tasks to be performed in advance of work commencing, such as CDM notification letters, ordering materials, informing site users of the impending work, and issuing a press release about the project.