Source: https://tendernation.io/guides/why-you-lose-tenders [Skip to main content](#main-content) Guide # Why you keep losing tenders, and how to fix it How to get the feedback you are entitled to under the Procurement Act, read your scores against the winner's, and find what really keeps costing you contracts. Updated 14 Oct 2026 You usually lose a tender on a few heavily weighted questions where the winner scored higher, not on everything, and the buyer's assessment summary tells you which ones. Under the Procurement Act 2023 a losing bidder gets its own scores and the winner's for each award criterion, so put them side by side, weight the gaps, and fix the answers that cost you most. If you keep losing, the cause is rarely one bad bid. It's the same weak answer, case study or price assumption carried from bid to bid. This guide shows how to find it. ## What feedback you're entitled to What you get depends on how the contract was awarded. **Above-threshold contracts awarded by competitive tender.** Before publishing the contract award notice, the buyer must give every supplier that submitted an assessed tender an assessment summary ([Procurement Act 2023, s.50(3)](https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/54/section/50)). The [Procurement Regulations 2024, reg.31](https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2024/692/regulation/31) set out what it must contain: the award criteria and how each was to be scored, and for both your tender and the most advantageous tender, the score for each criterion with an explanation by reference to the tender, how any sub-criteria were assessed, and the total and sub-total scores. The winner's details can be redacted where they are commercially sensitive and there is an overriding public interest in withholding them ([assessment summaries guidance, para 32](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/procurement-act-2023-guidance-documents-procure-phase/guidance-assessment-summaries-html)). Where several suppliers win, such as on a framework, the guidance says the buyer should compare you with the lowest-scoring successful tender (para 43). Some UK debriefing guidance, written for other regimes, still says there will be no comparison with the winning bid. Under the Act in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, you get that comparison by law. **Tenders that were disregarded.** An assessment summary only goes to an "assessed tender", meaning one that was assessed and not disregarded (s.50(5)). If your bid was thrown out for non-compliance, you may get no summary. If you failed a pass/fail criterion part-way, the buyer doesn't have to score the rest, but must give you the information for the criteria it did assess (guidance para 16). **Framework call-offs.** The assessment summary duty doesn't apply to call-off contracts, though guidance calls a similar approach best practice (para 41). **Below-threshold contracts.** Most lower-value council and NHS contracts are below the threshold. The Act doesn't require an assessment summary for them. Ask for feedback in writing anyway; many buyers will give it. ## Use the standstill period For most above-threshold contracts, the buyer can't sign until a standstill period of at least eight working days has passed, starting on the day it publishes the contract award notice ([s.51](https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/54/section/51)). Framework call-offs and dynamic market awards are exempt, unless the buyer chooses a voluntary standstill. Standstill is your window to ask questions while the evaluation is fresh. Ask for: - an explanation of any score that doesn't match what you submitted, with the page reference; - a breakdown for any criterion where sub-criteria were not explained; - a short debrief call with the evaluation lead. If you believe the rules were broken, get legal advice straight away. If proceedings start during standstill and the buyer is notified, it can't enter into the contract until the court decides ([s.101](https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/54/section/101)). Most claims must start within 30 days of when you knew or ought to have known about the problem ([s.106](https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/54/section/106)). This guide is not legal advice. ## Read your scores against the winner's Here is a method that works on any assessment summary. 1. **List every criterion** with its weighting, your score, the winner's score and the maximum. 2. **Convert each to weighted points.** For each criterion, divide the score by the maximum and multiply by the weighting. A 3 out of 5 on a 20% question is worth 12 points; the winner's 4 out of 5 is worth 16. 3. **Find the gap.** Subtract your weighted points from the winner's for each criterion, including price. 4. **Sort by gap.** The top two or three rows are where the contract went. Compare their total with your overall margin of defeat to see how much of the loss they explain. 5. **Read the evaluator's comments for those rows only**, next to the winner's comments. Look for what the winner showed that you didn't: named roles, a timeline, a measured outcome, a local partner. Don't spend your energy on a 1-point gap on a 5% question. Do spend it on a 2-point gap on a 25% question. If you lost on price but won on quality, look at your price score formula in the tender documents before cutting your rates. Some formulas punish a small price gap heavily, and the fix may be a sharper pricing model rather than a lower margin. ## The common reasons bids lose Once you have the gaps, they usually fall into a few patterns. **Not answering the question asked.** The evaluator scores against the question and the scoring guidance. If the question has four parts and you answered three, you can't reach the top band. Mirror the question's structure in your headings. **Claims without evidence.** "We provide an excellent service" scores nothing. Evaluators look for specific evidence: a named contract, a result with numbers, a process with owners and timescales. If comments say "limited evidence" or "lacked detail", this is your problem. **Generic content.** Reused answers that don't mention the buyer, its area or its specification score in the middle band at best. Evaluators can tell. **Misreading the price and quality weighting.** A bid built to be cheapest loses to quality-heavy criteria, and a premium bid loses when price carries most of the weight. Read the weighting first and decide where your bid can win. **Compliance failures.** A missing document, an expired insurance certificate, an answer over the word limit or a late upload can mean your tender is disregarded and never scored. These are the cheapest losses to prevent and the most painful. Check every pass/fail requirement before you write. **Weak social value.** Many contracts score social value as its own criterion. Vague promises score poorly against specific, measurable commitments tied to the contract. Councils have their own duty to consider social value under the [Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012](https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2012/3/section/1), and central government uses the [PPN 002](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ppn-002-taking-account-of-social-value-in-the-award-of-contracts) model, so read each buyer's questions rather than reusing one answer. **Bidding for the wrong contracts.** Some losses happen before you write a word: a strong incumbent, requirements you barely meet, or a buyer that always buys through a framework you're not on. A [bid/no-bid scorecard](/tools/bid-no-bid-scorecard) helps you drop these early. ## Look for patterns across bids, not just one One assessment summary tells you why you lost one contract. Five tell you why you keep losing. Tag every criterion from every debrief by theme: technical approach, delivery and mobilisation, staffing, experience and case studies, quality, risk, social value, environment, price. Then compare your average score by theme across bids. If your case-study questions sit at 2 or 3 out of 5 every time while delivery questions score 4, you know where the next month of effort should go. The fix is usually upstream of the next bid: - rewrite the case study that keeps scoring badly, with measured outcomes and a named client; - build a mobilisation plan template with roles, dates and risks, so you aren't writing it from scratch on deadline; - turn your social value promises into a costed, measurable offer you can deliver; - retire library answers that evaluators have marked down, or flag them so nobody reuses them without changes. ## What to change next time Before your next bid, run through this list. - Read the award criteria, weightings and scoring guidance before anything else. - Check every pass/fail item against the documents, and submit at least a day early. - Plan each answer around the scoring guidance's top band. - Put evidence in every answer: numbers, names, dates. - Rewrite, don't paste, anything from the bid library. - Get someone who didn't write it to score it against the guidance. - Ask clarification questions during the tender if something is unclear. For the writing method in full, read [how to write a tender](/guides/how-to-write-a-tender). If you mostly bid for council work, see [how to bid for council contracts](/guides/how-to-bid-for-council-contracts), and if you keep losing because you can't get on the right list or framework, read [council approved supplier lists, frameworks and dynamic markets](/guides/council-approved-supplier-lists). ## How TenderNation's AI debriefs work Every bid in your TenderNation pipeline has a debrief page. On every plan, including Free, it works out the standstill period and gives you two template emails to the buyer: one asking for a missing assessment summary, and one asking for clarification or a fuller debrief. Both quote the rules the buyer has to follow. On Professional and above, you can upload the assessment summary (PDF, Word or text) or paste it in, and the AI reads it into a table: - your score and the winner's for each criterion, with weightings, maximum scores and the evaluator's comments; - weighted points lost on each question, so the biggest gaps sit at the top; - each criterion linked to your answer to the same question in the bid workspace; - lessons you can save to your bid library. Only what the summary states is kept. If a score isn't there, it stays blank rather than being guessed. Across all your debriefs, TenderNation groups questions by theme and shows which kinds of question score badly again and again. Saved lessons then feed into [AI answer drafting](/features/ai-bid-writing) as advice on what to avoid, so the next draft doesn't repeat the weakness. You can also flag library answers that scored badly so nobody reuses them unchanged. The AI reads the feedback faster than you can. Deciding what to change, and finding the evidence to change it, is still your job. ## Keep going - [How to write a tender](/guides/how-to-write-a-tender) - [How to bid for council contracts](/guides/how-to-bid-for-council-contracts) - [Council approved supplier lists, frameworks and dynamic markets](/guides/council-approved-supplier-lists) Put this guide to work Search UK, EU and World Bank tenders in one place, get AI summaries and a fit score for each one, and track bids in a pipeline. Professional comes with a 14-day free trial, no card needed. 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