Technical Bid Evaluation for Process Equipment: Step by Step

A technical bid evaluation (TBE) decides which bids meet your specification before anyone compares prices. Engineers check every bid against the datasheets and specifications, list each deviation and exclusion, close open questions in writing and finish with a list of technically acceptable bidders. Only those bids go on to the commercial evaluation, where price, delivery and terms are weighed.

Why this matters now

Bids for engineered equipment rarely match the enquiry line for line. One supplier offers a different material, another leaves out the seal system, a third answers half the datasheet. Open the prices first and the cheapest bid tends to look best, often because it offers the least.

UK public procurement law makes the same point. Under the Procurement Act 2023, a public contract can only go to a tender that both satisfies the buyer's requirements and is the best against the award criteria [1]. These are public procurement rules, but the logic holds for any buyer: acceptable first, best second.

Where the TBE sits

The TBE starts when bids arrive and ends before the commercial evaluation begins. Keep the two apart: ask for an unpriced technical offer with prices sent separately, or hide the price columns from the engineers.

The World Bank's two envelope process formalises this: price envelopes stay unopened in a secure place while the technical bids are evaluated, and only bidders that meet the technical requirements have their prices opened [2]. Scotland's public sector guidance, the Procurement Journey, adds that as good practice no evaluator should assess both the technical and the commercial elements [3].

Set the criteria before you open a bid

Fix the evaluation rules before the RFQ goes out, as our RFQ best practice guide recommends, and keep them once bids arrive. Cover three things:

• Mandatory requirements, judged pass or fail: duty point, materials, hazardous area rating, design codes, testing.
• Scored criteria, if you use them, with their weights: efficiency, maintainability, spares commonality, documentation.
• How the two combine: for example, lowest evaluated price among acceptable bids, or a weighted technical and commercial score with a minimum technical mark.

Buyers covered by the Act must state the relative importance of their criteria, and if failing a criterion disqualifies a tender, the assessment methodology must say so in advance [1]. Buyers outside the Act have more freedom, but the same discipline makes a result defensible. This is general information, not legal advice.

The TBE step by step

1. Check completeness. Did each bidder return everything asked for: completed datasheets, drawings, performance curves, the inspection and test plan (ITP, the list of checks and who witnesses them) and a deviation list? Gaps become questions, not assumptions.
2. Build the compliance matrix. This is the heart of any TBE template: one row per requirement from the datasheet and specification, one column per bid, and a status in each cell: complies, deviation, excluded or clarify. Judge what the bid says: Scottish guidance tells evaluators to read submissions at face value and not read between the lines [3].
3. List deviations and exclusions. A deviation, or exception, is an offer that differs from what you asked for; an exclusion is scope the bid leaves out. The owning discipline accepts or rejects each deviation with a written reason, and alternatives are assessed one by one [4]. Exclusions go to the commercial team so prices can be brought to one scope.
4. Raise technical queries. Ask in writing, with a deadline, and put the same question to every bidder it applies to. Scottish guidance says clarification explains a bid as submitted: it is no place to negotiate price or essential aspects, and every exchange must be recorded [5]. A query closes when the bidder answers in writing and the answer becomes part of the bid. An answer that changes the price or the equipment is a revised offer, not a clarification: give every bidder the same chance, or set it aside.
5. Score, or pass and fail. Mandatory items pass or fail. For scored items, evaluators score independently, then agree final scores at a moderation meeting and record why [3].
6. Issue the technically acceptable list. Each bid is acceptable, acceptable with recorded conditions, or not acceptable, with the reason. Only acceptable bids go forward.
7. Report and sign off. Keep the criteria, matrix, query log, deviation decisions, scores and list in one report. CIPS expects a documented trail from start to finish, with each decision and its reason recorded and signed [4].

Who takes part

Procurement runs the process: timetable, bidder correspondence and query log. The technical assessment belongs to the technical members of the team, as CIPS advises [4]. In practice that means process, mechanical, materials, electrical and instrument engineers, each signing off their own rows. Quality assurance (QA) reviews the ITP, certificates and documents; health, safety and environment (HSE) checks hazardous area, noise and safety requirements.

Common mistakes

• Moving the criteria. Reweighting around one bidder's best feature turns an evaluation into a justification. Under the Act, a buyer may refine its criteria only in limited cases, and a refinement cannot add new ones [1].
• Scoring things you did not ask for. A clever extra may be worth having, but it is not in the criteria. Note it for the commercial discussion instead.
• Accepting "or equal" without evidence. Ask for proof. Even buyers covered by the Act, who must accept a true overseas equivalent to a UK standard they name, need not take a claimed one on trust and may ask for certification or test reports [6].
• Missing exclusions. They hide in notes, assumptions and standard terms, and a missed one leaves the commercial team comparing unlike scopes, as our budgetary versus firm quote guide shows.

Practical example

An EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) contractor is buying two centrifugal pumps, P201A/B, duty and standby, for a process stream containing chlorides. Three bids arrive, and prices stay sealed while the engineers build the matrix. The figures are illustrative.

Three technical queries go out, one for each open cell:

• Bid A gives 82 dB(A) at 1 m, from test data on the same pump size. Closed: complies.
• Bid B calls 316L suitable but, asked for evidence at the datasheet's chloride level, sends only a general brochure. The materials engineer, who specified duplex for this service, rejects the deviation.
• Bid C confirms the seal support system is outside its scope. Its seal meets the specification, so the bid stays acceptable and the exclusion goes to the commercial team.

Only now are prices opened, for A and C. In this example C quoted £2,500 less per pump than A, but an allowance of £2,900 per pump for the seal support system puts it £400 above. B's price is never opened: whatever it says, it is for a pump this service cannot use. The commercial comparison then follows our guide to comparing supplier quotations.

Line up the evidence before you rank

Building a compliance matrix by hand from three PDF quotations is slow work.

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