Rated Criteria in Government Bids

Once a bid clears the mandatory requirements, it enters the part of the evaluation that actually distinguishes suppliers. Rated criteria — sometimes called point-rated criteria — are the scored questions that separate compliant bids from one another.

The distinction matters because the two halves of an evaluation reward completely different behaviour. Mandatory requirements reward precision and completeness: meet the condition, attach the evidence, move on. Writing more does not help. Rated criteria reward substance and specificity: a fuller, better-evidenced answer genuinely earns more points.

Suppliers who treat a whole proposal with uniform effort tend to lose to competitors who understand which sections are scored and how heavily.

Rated criteria are weighted, and the weightings are published. A criterion worth 40 points is worth eight times one worth 5, and your proposal should reflect that ratio far more closely than most proposals do.

The common failure is writing at length about what interests you rather than what is weighted. Technical founders write beautifully about architecture when methodology is worth 10 points and past performance is worth 40. The result is a proposal that reads well and scores badly.

A simple discipline fixes most of this: before writing, build a table of every rated criterion with its weighting, and allocate your page budget in proportion.

This is not a rule to follow mechanically — some criteria are answerable in less space than their weighting suggests. But a proposal where the 10-point criterion runs longer than the 30-point one is almost always misallocated.

Many solicitations set a minimum technical score — commonly expressed as a percentage of available points overall, and sometimes per criterion as well. A bid below the threshold is eliminated, and its price envelope is never opened.

This has two consequences worth planning around.

**A single weak section can sink an otherwise strong bid.** Where per-criterion minimums apply, scoring well overall does not protect you. A response that is excellent on four criteria and neglects the fifth may fail on the fifth alone.

**Price cannot rescue a weak technical response.** If you are relying on aggressive pricing to win, confirm first that you can clear the technical threshold. Under a minimum-score regime, an unbeatable price on a failing technical bid is worth nothing.

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Evaluators score against the criterion as written, not against your proposal as a whole. The most reliable way to earn points is to make the connection between the criterion and your answer impossible to miss.

**Mirror the language of the criterion.** If the criterion asks how you will "ensure continuity of service during transition", use that phrasing as your heading. Evaluators are matching your text to their grid; making them translate costs you.

**Answer the question actually asked.** Criteria often contain several parts — an approach, how it will be managed, and how risks will be mitigated. Answers that cover the first and skip the rest lose points that were available for very little additional work.

**Evidence every claim.** Assertions score poorly; specifics score well. "Experienced team" is worth less than "the proposed lead delivered three comparable migrations, the most recent completed in March 2025 for a client of similar size."

**Do not assume knowledge carries between sections.** Evaluators often score criteria independently, sometimes with different people scoring different sections. Evidence given under one criterion may not be credited under another, so repeat the relevant specifics where they are needed.

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Once technical scoring is complete, most solicitations combine the technical score with price using a published formula. The formula varies, and it should be read every time rather than assumed from previous competitions.

Two structures are common. In a **weighted combination**, technical and price are each normalised to a score and combined using fixed weights — 70/30 and 60/40 are frequently seen. In a **value ratio**, technical points are divided by price to produce a score per dollar.

The structure changes optimal strategy materially. Under a heavily technical weighting, investing in a stronger team or a more thorough methodology can outperform trimming margin. Under a price-dominant weighting, the reverse is true, and effort beyond the technical minimum may return very little.

Understanding the mechanics of scoring changes how you write.

Public buyers commonly use an evaluation team rather than a single reader. Each member scores independently against the published grid, then the team meets to reach a consensus score. Some competitions require the consensus to be documented with a written rationale for each criterion.

Three practical implications follow.

**Your response must survive being read in isolation.** An evaluator scoring criterion 3 may never read criterion 1. Context you established earlier does not carry, which is why repeating relevant specifics is not redundancy — it is how you get credited.

**Ambiguity is resolved against you, not for you.** When a scorer cannot tell whether you meet the standard described, they cannot award the point. Reviewers are generally not permitted to assume favourable facts, and in a consensus discussion a claim that one evaluator inferred and another did not will usually settle low.

**Consistency across the document matters.** If your methodology section describes a five-person team and your staffing matrix shows three, evaluators notice. Discrepancies read as carelessness at best and as overstatement at worst, and they can pull down scores on criteria that were otherwise strong.

Most lost points come from a small number of repeated patterns rather than from genuine capability gaps.

**Describing capability instead of approach.** A criterion asking *how* you will deliver is not answered by explaining that you are well qualified to deliver. Capability belongs under team and past performance; methodology criteria want the actual method.

**Answering the heading, not the criterion.** Criteria frequently contain sub-questions buried in a sentence. "Describe your approach to transition, including how continuity will be maintained and how risks will be identified and mitigated" contains three requirements. Responses commonly address the first well and the other two barely.

**Generic content that could describe any bidder.** If a paragraph would read identically in a competitor's proposal, it is not earning points. Specifics — named people, dated projects, measurable outcomes, actual constraints of this requirement — are what distinguish.

**Ignoring the buyer's stated context.** Solicitations often explain why the requirement exists: a system reaching end of life, a service that has had continuity problems, a compliance deadline. A response that engages with that context reads as understanding; one that does not reads as templated.

**Leaving evidence in the appendix.** Attachments support a claim; they rarely substitute for one. If the substance of your answer lives only in Appendix F, it may not be scored under the criterion it belongs to.

• ✓Every criterion answered in its own labelled section, in the solicitation's order
• ✓Each sub-question within a criterion answered explicitly
• ✓Specifics — names, dates, values, outcomes — replacing adjectives
• ✓Buyer's stated context reflected in your response
• ✓Key evidence summarised in the body, not only appended
• ✓Team size, roles and hours consistent across every section
• ✓Response readable and creditable in isolation[/Checklist

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Rated criteria are where compliant bids are separated, and unlike mandatory requirements they reward proportional effort. The weightings are published, which means the evaluation is knowable in advance. Build the scoring grid before writing. Allocate pages in proportion to points. Check for minimum scores both overall and per criterion. Mirror the criterion's language, answer every part of the question, and evidence claims with specifics rather than assertions. Then read the price formula and decide where marginal effort is worth most. Most proposals are written around what the supplier finds interesting. The ones that win are written around what the buyer said it would score.