7 Things a Bid Review Can Identify

Completing a tender response can take days, weeks or even months. By the time the submission reaches its final stages, your bid team and subject matter experts may have read the same answers repeatedly.

This familiarity can become a problem because when you know what a response is supposed to say, it becomes much easier to read what you expect to see rather than what is actually on the page. Important information within the response may feel obvious to internal teams, but could be more difficult to piece together for an evaluator.

In these instances, BWL’s bid review services can add significant value.

Rather than simply proofreading a completed tender, an experienced bid reviewer examines the submission from a more objective perspective. They consider whether the response answers the buyer’s question, provides sufficient evidence, aligns with the scoring criteria and makes it straightforward for an evaluator to understand why your organisation should receive the available marks.

Below we outline 7 key aspects an independent bid review can uncover before your tender is submitted.

1. Questions That Have Only Been Partially Answered

Tender questions are rarely as simple as they first appear, as a single question may ask you to explain your proposed methodology, identify who will be responsible for delivery, demonstrate previous experience, outline how performance will be measured and describe how risks will be controlled.

You could write an excellent response covering four of those areas and lose marks because the fifth has been overlooked. Or you could cover each point but not quite in the right context the evaluator will be scoring.

One of the most important elements of a professional tender review is therefore breaking the question into its individual requirements.

For example, a question asking you to:

• Describe your mobilisation approach
• Explain how responsibilities will be allocated
• Identify key mobilisation risks
• Explain how those risks will be mitigated
• Demonstrate previous mobilisation experience

effectively contains five separate requirements.

A reviewer can assess whether each element has been answered clearly and given enough prominence within the response.

This is particularly valuable on complex public sector tenders and frameworks where questions can contain several different evaluation requirements.

2. Claims That Are Not Supported by Evidence

One of the most common weaknesses in tender responses is making positive statements without proving them.

Consider the difference between statements such as “We have extensive experience delivering similar contracts.”, and a response that explains what contracts have been delivered, their size and scope, the results achieved and how that experience will directly benefit the new client.

The first is simply a claim, but the second gives the evaluator quantifiable and scorable evidence.

Strong tender submissions should consistently support important statements with relevant proof, such as:

• Contract performance data
• KPIs
• Customer satisfaction scores
• Project outcomes
• Case studies
• Service improvements
• Cost savings
• Health and safety performance
• Environmental results
• Accreditations
• Relevant experience

Our bid review services can identify areas where an answer sounds persuasive but does not contain enough evidence to substantiate what is being claimed. The reviewer can then highlight where additional examples, metrics or supporting information could strengthen the response before submission.

3. Content That Describes Features Rather Than Client Benefits

Tender responses often become heavily focused on the bidder. “We use…”, “Our team has…”, “We operate…”, “We have developed…”.

There is nothing inherently wrong with explaining your capabilities. The problem occurs when the response never completes the story by explaining why those capabilities matter to the buyer.

An evaluator simply doesn’t need to understand what you do. They need to understand the benefit it provides to their organisation, employees, customers, service users or stakeholders.

For example:

• Feature: We provide clients with access to a live reporting dashboard.
• Benefit: The client can monitor performance against agreed KPIs in real time, allowing emerging issues to be identified and addressed before they affect service delivery.

The second statement makes the relevance much clearer.

During a bid review, responses can be assessed to determine whether the bidder’s solution has been consistently connected back to the buyer’s requirements and desired outcomes.

4. Win Themes That Have Disappeared During the Writing Process

Strong bids focus on clearly on the reasons why the organisation should win the tender, including:

• Relevant experience
• Reduced delivery risk
• Innovation
• Social value
• Technical expertise
• Local resources
• Sustainability
• Service continuity
• Cost efficiencies
• Added value

However, as multiple people contribute to a submission, those messages can gradually become diluted throughout the writing process. One section might communicate them strongly while another barely mentions them at all.

An independent bid review provides an opportunity to look at the submission as a complete document and ask an important question:

Are the reasons for choosing this organisation clear and consistent throughout the tender?

Win themes should not simply be inserted repeatedly into answers. They should be reinforced naturally through relevant evidence, methodologies and benefits.

A reviewer can identify where those differentiators have been lost and where they could be strengthened.

5. Answers That Are Difficult for an Evaluator to Score

A good tender response should not make the evaluator work unnecessarily hard to find the information they need. Evaluators may be reviewing several responses or competing submissions containing hundreds or even thousands of pages of material. 

A good clean structure therefore matters in the evaluation process. Long paragraphs, vague headings and important information buried halfway through a page can reduce the clarity of an otherwise strong answer.

A professional tender review considers the response from the reader’s perspective.

• Could clearer headings be used to map to the question?
• Would a table communicate responsibilities more effectively?
• Could a process be presented as numbered stages?
• Are key benefits visible?
• Does the answer follow the same sequence as the question?

Where permitted by the tender instructions, thoughtful use of headings, tables, graphics and other visual elements can make complex information easier to understand.

BWL’s Bid Review Services assess areas including structure, narrative, compliance, evidence and alignment with the scoring criteria, helping businesses strengthen submissions before they reach the evaluator.

6. Internal Knowledge That Hasn’t Made It Into the Bid

One of the biggest challenges in bid writing is converting organisational knowledge into information that can score well. Your Operations Director may know exactly how mobilisation will work, your Health and Safety Manager may understand every control used on site, and your Account Director may know how problems will be escalated.

But unless that information appears clearly within the tender response, the evaluator cannot give you credit for it. This is particularly common where subject matter experts provide draft content.

An expert may write: “All incidents will be managed in accordance with our standard escalation procedure.”. 

Internally, everyone may understand what that procedure involves, but the evaluator probably doesn’t. A reviewer can identify these assumptions and ask the questions an external reader is likely to ask:

• What is the procedure?
• Who is responsible?
• What happens first?
• What are the timescales?
• How is the client informed?
• How is the issue closed out?

Turning assumed and implied knowledge into explicit, relevant information can significantly improve the quality of the final response.

7. Content That Is Technically Correct but Still Isn’t Competitive

Compliance should be the minimum objective of a tender response, not the end goal. A bid can answer every question and still remain relatively unremarkable, which is where the difference between compliance and competitiveness becomes important.

Once the core requirements have been addressed, a reviewer can consider whether the response goes further.

• Does it demonstrate meaningful added value?
• Does it contain strong evidence?
• Does it differentiate the organisation?
• Are commitments measurable?
• Does it clearly relate the proposed approach to the buyer’s priorities and requirements?
• Would the evaluator understand why this solution is better suited to their requirements than another compliant submission?

This is also where our wider bid writing support can be useful. Where a review identifies sections requiring substantial improvement, an experienced bid writer can help redevelop those responses rather than simply highlighting the weaknesses.

When Should You Arrange a Bid Review?

One of the biggest mistakes organisations make is leaving the review until immediately before the submission deadline. Finding a major weakness a day before submissions gives your team very little opportunity to do anything meaningful about it.

Building review stages into the wider bid programme allows enough time for feedback to be considered and changes to be made.

For larger submissions, this might involve reviewing responses at different stages (e.g. Pink and Red review gates) rather than waiting until every section has been completed.

Where an organisation is managing a complex tender involving multiple contributors, our professional bid management services can also help coordinate the wider process, including review stages, internal deadlines, subject matter experts and final submission activities.

A Bid Review Should Challenge the Response, Not Just Correct It

There is a significant difference between proofreading a tender and reviewing one.

Proofreading asks: “Is this written correctly?”, a strategic bid review asks: “Will this give the evaluator the information and confidence they need to award the available marks?”

Spelling, grammar and presentation remain important, but they are only one part of producing a winning submission.

Effective bid review services challenge the content itself. They help identify missing information, unsupported claims, weak evidence, compliance risks, unclear benefits and opportunities to communicate your solution more convincingly.

When significant time and resources have already been invested in pursuing an opportunity, an independent review provides an additional level of quality assurance before the final submission leaves your organisation.

Strengthen Your Next Tender Before Submission

Even experienced bid teams benefit from an independent perspective.

BWL Group’s experienced bid professionals provide Bid Review Services to small, medium and large organisations tendering for projects, contracts and frameworks across a wide range of sectors.

Whether you need an independent review of selected responses or support reviewing a larger, more complex tender submission, our team can examine your content against the tender requirements and identify practical opportunities for improvement.

Find out more about BWL Group’s Bid Review Services or contact our team to discuss an upcoming tender.