The Reader Holds a Scoresheet

A technical response is written as if someone will read it. Nobody will read it the way its authors imagine. A panel will score it, one rated criterion at a time, each evaluator holding a sheet that says what earns points and what does not. Every paragraph either moves a number on that sheet or spends a page that could have.

The federal rules make the stakes arithmetic. A standard federal evaluation clause sets the sequence. A bid that misses a mandatory criterion is not responsive. A bid that falls short of the minimum points is not responsive. Among the bids that survive, the one with the highest combined rating of technical merit and price is recommended for award. The weighting is set solicitation by solicitation; in the clause's own worked example, technical merit carries sixty percent. The highest technical score does not win automatically. Neither does the lowest price.

What the evaluator can score is narrower than what the firm knows. One federal solicitation states it plainly: only the documentation provided with the proposal will be evaluated. The firm's reputation, the evaluator's memory of a past project, the explanation the team would give across a table: none of it reaches the sheet unless it is on the page.

Five Ways a Strong Firm Writes a Losing Response

1.The response organized around the firm

Firms write in the order they think about themselves: history, capabilities, projects, people. Evaluators score in the order of the grid. When the two orders differ, the evaluator has to search the response for the evidence each criterion asks for. Evidence an evaluator has to hunt for is evidence at risk of not being found.

2.The claim without the proof

"Extensive experience on occupied institutional buildings" scores nothing on its own. A rated criterion asks for something an evaluator can check: the project, its value, its dates, the firm's role, the person who led it, what was hard about it and how it was resolved. An assertion that does not point to that evidence is spending page budget on an adjective.

3.The requirement restated as the answer

Repeating the requirement back to the evaluator is the most common filler in federal responses, because it is the easiest paragraph to write. It earns nothing. The evaluator wrote the requirement. What the evaluator needs is how this team meets it, in the first sentence, with the evidence right behind it.

4.Pages spent where they feel important

A page limit is a ceiling, not a guideline. One federal solicitation is blunt about it: material beyond the page maximum will not be considered. Teams overspend on the firm overview, the section they know best, and run short on the methodology criterion that carries the most points. Pages allocated by comfort are pages taken from the criteria that decide the score.

5.Counting on the clarification

Federal authorities may seek clarification during evaluation, though they are under no obligation to, and teams sometimes write as if a gap can be explained later. It cannot be filled later. The Canadian International Trade Tribunal has described a clarification as an explanation of some existing aspect of a proposal. A change that substantively revises the bid is bid repair, and it is not permitted. Whatever the response does not say at closing, it never says.

An evaluator cannot award a point for evidence the response did not give.

Why This Belongs to the Principal

Writing is usually delegated to whoever has the time, with the principal reading a near-final draft the night before. That is backwards. A writer can make a response clear. Only the principal can decide which projects the firm will rest its case on, which people it will name, and which claims it will stand behind for the life of the contract. Those decisions are the response. The prose follows them.

Owners have a stake here too. An evaluation is only as good as the evidence placed in front of it. A capable firm that writes a weak response is a capable firm the owner cannot select, and the field narrows for reasons that have nothing to do with who can build.

The response is the only version of the firm the evaluator meets.

A Writing Discipline: Six Controls

01
Build the compliance matrix first. Every mandatory and every rated criterion, its points, its page allowance and the section that answers it. The matrix is the outline. Nothing is drafted outside it.
02
Allocate pages by points. Divide the page budget by the points each criterion carries before anyone writes a word. Change the allocation only for a stated reason.
03
Mirror the grid. Same numbering, same headings, same sequence as the evaluation criteria. The evaluator should find each answer exactly where the sheet says to look.
04
Answer first, then prove it. Each section opens with how the team meets the criterion. Project, value, dates, role and named lead follow. A claim that cannot be proved in the response comes out of it.
05
Score it cold before it goes. A reviewer who did not write the response scores it against the grid, criterion by criterion, as an evaluator would. Their score, not the authors' confidence, shows where the points are being lost.
06
Confirm every fact with its owner. Each value, date and role is confirmed in writing by the firm or person it describes before submission. A figure a reference contradicts costs more than the points it was meant to earn.

Write for the Evaluator, Not the Brochure

Evaluators are not the audience a marketing team imagines. They are technical people working through several responses against the same sheet, looking for the evidence the grid tells them to find. They reward the response that makes that work easy: numbered to the grid, plain in its claims, specific in its proof.

Polish that slows them down costs points. A cover image, a mission statement, a page of firm history: each is a page the evaluator turns past on the way to the criterion. A plain table that lets them confirm a requirement in ten seconds earns more than a well-designed spread that makes them search.

Companion Pieces

The Team Before the Bid concerns the step before this one: choosing the people and projects the response will have to prove. The Last Mile concerns the step after it: the file that has to arrive and open before any of this is scored. What the Evaluation Grid Cannot See reads the same instrument from the owner's side.

The Fiduciary Reading

A technical response is a firm's capability translated into evidence, under a page limit, against a deadline. The translation is where strong firms lose. Not for lack of experience, but because the response did not put that experience where the evaluator was told to look.

A matrix, a page budget, a mirrored grid, an answer in the first sentence, a cold score and confirmed facts cost a pursuit team a few days. The alternative is a capable firm scored as an ordinary one.

Write for the scoresheet.

Luc Simard
LSPP Solutions