Definition
Evidence
Proof that a claim in your bid is true.
Evidence in a tender context is anything concrete that substantiates a claim made in a bid response: past project data, named case studies, accreditations, policies, third-party certifications, or measurable outcomes. Evaluators are trained to distinguish evidenced statements from unsupported assertions, and the latter typically score in the lower bands regardless of how well written they are.
Why assertion without evidence fails to score
Most public sector evaluation models score against defined criteria such as 'the extent to which the response demonstrates relevant experience' rather than simply 'the extent to which the response sounds confident'. A sentence like 'we have extensive experience delivering similar contracts' contains no checkable content and gives a marker nothing to award points against.
The same claim backed by a specific, named example, a figure, or a reference to an accreditation gives the evaluator something concrete to match against the scoring criteria, which is usually the difference between a middling and a strong score.
Types of evidence commonly used in bids
Different questions call for different forms of evidence, and matching the type to the question matters.
- Quantified past performance data (volumes handled, timescales achieved, cost savings)
- Named case studies or references from comparable contracts
- Third-party accreditations and certifications (e.g. ISO standards, sector-specific approvals)
- Documented policies and procedures the buyer can inspect
- Client testimonials or satisfaction scores, where permitted and genuine
- Independent audit or inspection outcomes
Getting evidence out of subject-matter experts
Technical staff often describe their work in general terms because that's how they think about it day to day. A bid writer's job is to press for the specific figure, the specific client, the specific outcome, rather than accepting a generalised description and writing it up as if it were already evidence.
Frequently asked questions
- What if a supplier genuinely has no directly comparable evidence?
- Use the closest available equivalent and be transparent about any gap, focusing on evidence of transferable capability such as similar processes on a different type of contract. Overstating a weak match usually reads as unconvincing to an experienced evaluator.
- Does evidence always need to be quantified?
- Numbers are persuasive where genuinely available, but qualitative evidence — a specific process, a named accreditation, a documented policy — is also valid evidence, provided it is concrete rather than a vague assertion.
- Can evidence be included in an appendix instead of the main answer?
- Only if the ITT explicitly permits it. Many public sector evaluations only mark the content within the stated word or page limit for the main answer, so evidence tucked away in an unreferenced appendix may simply not be scored.
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