Go or no-go: decide in 15 minutes whether a tender is worth writing

Why do you need an explicit go/no-go decision?

A tender can easily take 20–40 working hours: reading the documents, gathering certificates, writing the solution description, pricing and collecting signatures. For a smaller company those are hours taken away from delivery and sales.

Without an explicit decision you drift into tenders on momentum alone. You have already started reading, so you might as well write. The point of go/no-go is not to say no more often but to say no earlier. The questions below are ordered so that the ones that most often give a no come first.

Step 1: May you take part?

• Do you meet every certification criterion, with the right scope and valid on the tender deadline?
• Do you meet the criteria for financial standing, for example turnover and credit rating, for the years stated?
• Do you have the right number of reference projects of the right size, within the right time window?
• Is there any ground for exclusion that could apply to you, for example unpaid taxes or social security contributions?

This is the step where most tenders fail, often on criteria hidden in an appendix. The full checklist, with turnover limits and time windows for references, is in the guide on mandatory and qualification criteria.

A no in step 1 does not always mean no-go. Sometimes you can rely on another supplier's capacity or submit a joint tender. But that takes preparation, so decide it here and not two days before the tender deadline.

Step 2: Can you deliver?

• Can you handle the volume and the schedule without crowding out existing customers?
• Do you cover the geographical area, or would it need travel and staff you do not have?
• Are there mandatory criteria in the specification that need new equipment, new systems or new skills?
• Are the contract terms, such as liquidated damages, liability, insurance and payment terms, something you can live with for the whole contract period?

Step 3: Can you win?

• Do you know how the contract is awarded, lowest price, cost or best price-quality ratio, and does that suit your strengths?
• Is there an incumbent supplier with a clear head start?
• Do you know roughly what similar contracts were awarded for, so your price is not a guess?
• Is the contract worth the hours even if you lose more often than you win?

The competition is real but often smaller than you think. According to statistics from the Swedish National Agency for Public Procurement (Upphandlingsmyndigheten), an advertised procurement received an average of 4.6 tenders in 2024, the median was 3, and 19 per cent received only a single tender. How the evaluation method affects your chances is covered in the guide on lowest price or best value, and how to find earlier winning prices is in the guide on award decisions.

How do we make the decision a habit?

• Write the answer down. A yes or no with one sentence on why. It takes a minute and lets you see patterns after six months.
• Let someone other than the writer decide. The person already caught up in the assignment is the worst placed to rule it out.
• Keep the no-go decisions. If you often say no for the same reason, the same certificate or the same reference criteria, you know what is worth fixing.
• Use the same questions every time. Print the go/no-go checklist (in Swedish) and fill it in for every procurement you consider.

What the decision is worth in money is covered in the guide what it costs to win a tender.

Can Procura do step 1 for us?

Procura is a Swedish service that shows suppliers which public tenders they qualify for and, where the price has been published, what similar contracts were awarded for. For every procurement the criteria for your company are checked against your profile, and the criterion that blocks you is always named. Where prices have been published, Procura shows what comparable contracts were awarded for, always with the sample size and how many published a price. Read more about how it works.

Sources

• Upphandlingsmyndigheten, statistics on advertised procurements, in Swedish: number of tenders per procurement 2024
• Swedish Public Procurement Act (2016:1145), riksdagen.se, in Swedish: chapter 14 on qualification, chapter 16, section 1 on evaluation methods