Most small firms read the result, feel pleased or annoyed, and move on. The paperwork that comes with a result is the most direct feedback a bid will ever get, and it arrives with a deadline attached.
The assessment summary
Under the Procurement Act 2023, before a buyer publishes its contract award notice for most above-threshold contracts, it must give every supplier whose tender was assessed an assessment summary. It explains how your tender was scored against each award criterion and gives information about how the winning tender was assessed, so you can see where the gap was.
For a procurement that started under the old rules, you will instead receive a standstill letter setting out your scores and the reasons for the decision. For a below-threshold contract there is no equivalent duty, but most buyers will give feedback if you ask politely and promptly.
The standstill period
For most above-threshold contracts, the buyer must wait a standstill period of eight working days after publishing the contract award notice before signing the contract. Some awards, such as many call-offs from frameworks, do not need one.
Standstill is the window in which an unsuccessful bidder can challenge the decision and, by starting proceedings in time, normally stop the contract being signed until a court decides. If you think the buyer made a real error, such as scoring against criteria it never published or getting a fact about your tender wrong, take legal advice straight away. The time limits are short, and a challenge is costly and rarely the right move for a small firm. Most of the value of a result is in learning from it.
Reading your scores
- Compare each score with the top descriptor in the scoring guide, not with how good you felt the answer was.
- Look for the pattern. Dropping marks on one question is bad luck. Dropping them on every method question means the answers describe what you do but not how.
- Separate price from quality. A strong quality score beaten on price is a different problem from a weak one.
- Note what the evaluators said was missing. Those words are the checklist for next time.
Asking the buyer
If something in the summary is unclear, ask the contact named in the tender, briefly and specifically: which part of the answer lost marks, or what a higher-scoring answer would have included. Buyers cannot share a competitor's confidential material, but many will explain what they were looking for. Keep the tone constructive. You will very likely bid to the same people again.
Keep a record
A simple bid log pays for itself quickly: the buyer, the value, your scores by question, the winner's scores where given, the price gap and what you would change. After a handful of bids it shows where your firm loses marks.
When the work comes back
A lost contract is a future opportunity with a date on it. Once the contract is signed, the buyer publishes a contract details notice with the supplier, the value and the dates. The end date, allowing for any extensions, is when the work returns, and the year before it is the time to prepare. See contract renewals: why a year out is the right time.
If you won
Read the summary anyway. It shows which answers carried the bid and which nearly lost it, and the weaker answers are often where delivery will be watched most closely. On larger contracts the buyer will also publish performance against key performance indicators, so the targets in your bid become a public record.
On Bidwire
Buyer pages list what a buyer has awarded and to whom, renewal alerts reach you about a year before a contract in your trades ends, and if the winner is a registered company you can follow its future wins with competitor watch.
This is a summary for orientation, not legal advice. Which rules apply depends on the contract's value and on whether the procurement started under the Procurement Act 2023 or the old regulations. GOV.UK publishes the government's guidance on assessment summaries and standstill.