Best practice tender and evaluation processes should be adopted to ensure selection of the best bidder. Best practice processes include developing clearly defined bid criteria, creating a framework to handle probity issues and constructing clear and informative bid documents. It is important that government develops and maintains clear and structured communication with bidders throughout the bid process to ensure that the risk allocation required by government is fully understood. The bid documents should contain sufficient but not excessive information. Oversupply of information can cloud government's primary messages. Oversupply can also lead bidders to a particular project option and unnecessarily restrict their ability to deliver innovation. At the same time, government must be clear about its requirements and any constraints it imposes. The more information provided (within reasonable boundaries) to enable bidders to assess risk, the better the bidders are able to quantify and price that risk.
Government should not, as a matter of course, always accept the lowest bid as representing the best value for money outcome. Appropriate evaluation processes should be adopted to help ensure bids are robust and the bidder is not aggressively valuing risks simply to win the bid, thereby compromising long-term value for money to government.