3.1.1 To give bidders the best chance of putting forward proposals which will meet the procurer's requirements, procurers should make the award criteria for the appointment of the preferred bidder and award of the contract clear to bidders. This is also a requirement of procurement law. However, detailed scoring and weighting matrices need not be provided. It is recognised that any central set of criteria must be sufficiently flexible to take into account the circumstances of different sectors with different projects. Nevertheless, experience to date suggests that there are some common criteria that it might be sensible to include. These are explored in Section 4 below.
3.1.2 Before the appointment of a preferred bidder, procurers and their advisers must be satisfied that bidders have:
• presented proposals that meet the output specification;
• provided whole life value for money;
• accepted the key contractual terms and the required transfer of risk;
• confirmed access to finance that does not require underwriting by the public sector or revisions to the contractual terms;
• quoted a unitary charge and specified other costs, if there are any, that are affordable to the public sector;
• if a consortium, demonstrated fully that it is a cohesive entity rather than a disparate collection of constructors and service providers.
3.1.3 Before coming to a decision on a preferred bidder, in addition to being satisfied on the above points, procurers should also be completely satisfied that:
• the proposals to meet the output specification, including the strength of the underlying assumptions in the outline business case are sufficiently flexible;
• it is able to pay for the deal (taking into account any balance sheet implications);
• proposed contract management arrangements are appropriate;
• outline planning permission has been obtained as required; and
• it has identified a strategy for dealing with any attempts by the preferred bidder to renegotiate key aspects of the proposed deal. This strategy may include the establishment of a reserve bidder, being ready to invite "refreshed" bids (see Section 5 below), or in exceptional circumstances, to re-tender.