8. Before down-selecting to the preferred bidder the acquisition team must be satisfied that all of the remaining bidders have given sufficiently clear, verified and mature proposals to allow a firm view to be taken against each of the eight categories in the table below. This could be achieved using separate issue papers, matrices (e.g. to define risk transfer and compensation on termination arrangements) and heads of agreement type documents.
Table 1: Pre-requisite for illustrative project selecting Preferred Bidder
# | Pre-requisites | Bidder 1 | Bidder 2 | Bidder 3 |
1 | proposals that meet the output specification | ? | N | Y |
2 | provide vfm | Y | N | Y |
3 | accepted key T&Cs | N | Y | N |
4 | accepted risk transfer | ? | Y | Y |
5 | no scope to seek price revisions | N | N | Y |
6 | confirmed access to finance | Y | Y | Y |
7 | quoted unitary charges that are affordable | Y | N | Y |
8 | demonstrated that they are a cohesive team | Y | N | ? |
[Note that the table has been filled by hypothetical answers to illustrate the points made in the paper. In reality there is a greater degree of interdependence among the criteria such that, for example, a "no" answer on pre-requisite 1 would imply "no's" on numbers 2, 5, 6 and 7.]
9. The eight criteria are expanded upon in the Treasury Taskforce's Technical Note number 4, "How to appoint and work with a Preferred Bidder".
10. It should be noted that the answers against some of the criteria will not necessarily be objective and may require judgements to be made on the evidence supplied by bidders. For example, unconditional access to finance will not be confirmed until financial close, but a view must be taken, based on experts' advice, as to the likelihood of the funds' being made available.
11. At the end of the bidding phase, or after Best and Final Offers, the project team should reject any bid, irrespective of how it is rated for price, if there are clear grounds for thinking that, for example:
• the specified quality of service will not be achieved,
• that the service will not be available by the required date,
• that the funding proposals are not sufficiently robust, or
• that key assumptions on which the bid is based are unrealistic.
12. It should be noted that the compliance of each bid, along with its accuracy, is assumed to have been adequately covered earlier in the evaluation process. Bids that clearly do not comply or are clearly incorrect in some way should be addressed at the start of the process and these issues should be resolved before a bidder comes forward to be considered as a potential preferred bidder. While quality of the bid itself is evidence of a bidder's resource and commitment, the selection process should not be designed to choose as preferred bidder the consortium with the best bid compiling team.