The steps to completion: Evaluation, reporting, analysis, contract award

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

Evaluation and contract award are the final and most critical stages of your complex procurement project. At this point, you need to be absolutely confident in your proposed evaluation process, as any mistakes could cost you dearly.

We’ve already shared checklists for the ideal steps that should be taken during the planning and preparation phases, which if followed, should set you up for generating the best possible outcome during the last stages of the project.

To conduct the most robust and transparent evaluation, we recommend using AWARD^® Execute – the third and core offering from our AWARD^® Suite. This part of our modular solution ensures a highly structured yet flexible approach to the task at hand and allows the whole team to simultaneously collaborate. Let’s take a look at the actions you’ll take within the three sections that make up the AWARD^® Execute solution:

1. Evaluation

To find the most advantageous tender (MAT), you must conduct the evaluation of all bidders based on the weighting measures and value for money parameters set in the preparation stage. Each must be judged fairly by appropriately qualified evaluators.

Your evaluation must be a collaborative process that aligns the project goals with its outcomes. Sometimes this includes tens of stakeholders, all of whom are working to different schedules in different locations.

The aim of AWARD^® Execute is to support you in making the best buying decision(s), in the most efficient, effective and sustainable way possible. To do this, the tool allows you to take control of the workflow, focus your resources for maximised efficiency, and minimise potential disruption. Its all-online approach means that your evaluation will require significantly less paper and travel than more traditional methods of procurement.

2. Reporting

Access to highly flexible real-time data that can be sliced and diced to give you a plethora of meaningful insights and custom reports is fundamental when dealing with a particularly complex project. Being able to monitor live project progress and interact with bidder responses as they are updated ensures you stay on track and ultimately get high-quality proposal submissions by the deadline.

Reporting is also about recording the findings of the evaluation. As with the planning and preparation stages, complete transparency is required for auditing purposes as these documents are created. In addition to progress reports, AWARD^® Execute provides debriefing templates that are branded with your logo. These support you to feedback and wrap up the project in a structured and efficient timescale with a more professional look-and-feel.

3. Analysis and Evaluation Design

Analysis happens in tandem with your evaluation and reporting steps. It allows you to understand how well your project is progressing using the real-time data reports and whether you need to implement any interventions to get it back on track.

Initially, the evaluation team will each give a score and rationale for each question. There is then a consensus phase, where a moderator must agree on a final score and rationale to be used for each question. The consensus scores for the set of questions are then used to determine the winner, using a previously published aggregation method, with the consensus rationales used for debriefing purposes.

Once this is complete, the procurement team can analyse each of the evaluators’ findings for quality assurance purposes. The evaluation team will be looking for weaknesses, inconsistencies and non-compliance within the bids. Think of this step as the belt and braces in your confidence in the process.

Contract Award

The execution stage of your complex procurement is the one that carries the most outward risk as it’s the culmination point of all your planning and preparation. The aim of this stage is to award a contract to the supplier with the best combination of cost and quality that achieves the project’s objectives.

Remember though, the work does not stop once the contract has been awarded and the bidders have been debriefed. In essence, all that has been procured to this point is an expectation and the promise to deliver the required capability, not the capability itself. So the challenge becomes the need to apply the same level of scrutiny during the delivery phase, so as to guarantee a successful project fulfilment.

Conclusion

By engaging our AWARD^® Solution for the end-to-end process of your project, you’ll have all of the tools at your fingertips for a smooth and confident contract award. Each solution within the suite has specifically designed features to support each step of the journey.

As an add-on or as part of your package, you can access the Commerce Decisions Procurement Evaluation Design Team. As world-renowned independent experts in evaluation, the team offer comprehensive assistance to make sure that your project adheres to best practices and results in the best possible outcome.