Tender advisory from Pactis Partners puts the buyer's eyes on your bid before the buyer does. We have sat on evaluation panels. We score your submission as the panel will, show you the marks you are leaving on the table, and help you recover them before you submit.
What we do
- Criteria decoding — what each question is really asking, how it is weighted, and what a top-scoring answer contains.
- Bid review — your draft scored question by question against the published criteria, with the marks you are losing and how to recover them.
- Structure and presentation — evidence placed where the evaluator looks for it, answers in the order the scoring matrix reads.
- The buyer's pressures — the governance, budget, audit and risk pressures on the procurement team, and how a bid that relieves them scores higher.
- Presentation and clarification rehearsal — the panel's questions before the panel asks them.
- Lost-bid debriefs — what your assessment summary is really telling you, and what to change next time.
Why evaluators mark the way they do
An evaluator has a scoring matrix, a stack of submissions and a governance process that requires every mark to be justified. They are not reading for your story; they are reading for evidence against each criterion, in the place the question tells them to look. Most bids we have scored lost on the page, not on capability — the answer was there, three paragraphs from where the criterion said it should be.
Our record
Over £1m in verified savings delivered for clients across £10m of negotiated spend, in financial services, construction and property. Before founding the practice we managed more than £60m of annual category spend on the buy side — the side of the table that scores the bids.
Questions we are asked
- What is tender advisory?
- Tender advisory is independent support for a business bidding for a contract. We read your submission the way the buyer's evaluation panel will — against the published criteria and weightings — and show you where marks are being lost and how to recover them before you submit.
- How are tenders scored?
- Most formal tenders score each quality question against a published scale (commonly 0–5 or 0–10), weight each question, and combine the quality score with a price score. Evaluators must be able to justify every mark against the criteria, so they score the evidence they can find where the question tells them to look — not the capability you did not put on the page.
- What is an assessment summary?
- Under the Procurement Act 2023, which applies to contracts procured from 24 February 2025, public buyers provide assessment summaries to suppliers explaining how their tender was assessed against the award criteria, including against the winning bid. It is the most useful feedback a bid team will receive — and it is often filed unread.
- What is the free Lost-Bid Debrief?
- Send us the assessment summary or feedback from a tender you lost. Within 48 hours we send back a one-page read of where the marks went and what the panel was really rewarding. No fee and no obligation.
- Do you write bids?
- Our focus is evaluation, not ghost-writing: decoding the criteria, scoring your drafts as the panel will, restructuring answers so evidence sits where evaluators look for it, and rehearsing presentations and clarification rounds. Where it helps, we work alongside your bid writer.
- Who is tender advisory for?
- Contractors and service firms bidding into public-sector frameworks, suppliers pitching for major corporate accounts or renewals run as tenders, and professional-services firms in competitive pitch processes — particularly businesses that keep finishing second.
- How much does it cost?
- Every engagement is scoped and priced as a fixed fee agreed before we start — from a review of one live submission to full bid partnership on a tender that matters. The Lost-Bid Debrief is free.
