KnowledgeWriting a tender
STEP BY STEP
Writing a tender: step-by-step guide
Writing a tender means making a bid that meets all the requirements of the contracting authority and earns the most points on the award criteria. The work runs in a fixed order, from reading the documents to submitting.
The eight steps
This guide assumes a European public tender. Each step points to the articles where the topic is covered in full.
- Read the documentsA European public tender arrives as a folder of ten, twenty or more documents. In the first hour, read in a fixed order the knock-outs, the award criteria and weighting, the time limits, the format requirements and the contract risks. See reading tender documents and selection criteria and knock-outs.
- Decide whether to bidLook at volume, penalty clauses, start-up time and contract term. With a short term, penalties out of proportion or a start-up that is too tight, the answer is usually no. See bid or no-bid. If you are a small company, read European tenders for small businesses.
- Ask questionsBetween publication and the deadline you can have a say through the clarification round. Explain in your question why you ask it and offer an alternative. See clarification questions and the Proportionality Guide.
- Get your evidence and declarations rightThe ESPD, exclusion grounds, references and CVs decide whether your bid is valid. See filling in the ESPD, exclusion grounds and the certificate of conduct, references, CVs and certificates.
- Decide where you earn the pointsPrice and quality are weighed together. Work out how many points one percent of price is worth and how many one step higher on each quality question. See price-quality ratio scoring, EMVI and BPKV and differentiation.
- Write for the evaluatorLink every strength to what the buyer wants to achieve and back every promise with figures, references and examples. See writing for points, method statement, sustainability, social return and writing tenders with AI.
- Set the priceA price you can justify and that still makes money in year three. See pricing a proposal, cost per hour, price indexation and abnormally low tenders.
- Check and submitSet your internal deadline three to four days before the real one, to leave time for checking. See the final week and an error in your bid.
After you submit
In a European public tender, the buyer must give reasons for its award decision, so you can see where the winner scored better than you. Read after the award decision and record what you learn with a win-loss analysis.
If you bid more often
If you bid regularly, set up a fixed way of working: who does what, when it must be ready and with which material. See organising the bid process. An overview of software that can help is on tender software.
Are you writing a proposal for a company?
In a private tender the client sets the rules. The articles how to win a private tender, how to write a business proposal and responding to an RFP belong to that route. The two guides bundle all articles in order: European public tenders and proposals and private tenders. If a term is unfamiliar, look it up in the glossary.
HOW ATVALIO HELPS
Atvalio Tenders follows these steps. It reads the documents, gives bid/no-bid advice in two rounds, suggests questions for the clarification round and writes per award criterion from the profile of your company, with a source behind every statement. You decide and submit yourself.
Read on
Want to do this with Atvalio?
Atvalio Tenders launches in January 2027. On the waiting list, you can be the first to start a 14-day trial on a real tender.