Bid/no-bid decisions for donor-funded tenders
Every proposal you write takes senior time away from a bid you are more likely to win. This guide gives consultancies bidding on World Bank and EU tenders a repeatable way to decide: knockout questions, a weighted scoring matrix you can download, a check on whether price can rescue a weak technical score, and a simple expected-value test.
Why the decision deserves a process
A technical proposal for a donor-funded assignment pulls in a proposal manager, a technical lead, key experts who have to review and sign their CVs, partners, and someone to build the price. That time is the real cost of bidding, and it comes from the same people who are delivering your current contracts.
Shortlists also put a ceiling on your odds. The World Bank’s Procurement Regulations call for shortlists of five to eight firms for most consulting selections, and EU external-action tenders under PRAG shortlist between four and eight candidates. If every shortlisted firm were equally strong, your baseline chance would sit between 12.5% and 25%. A bid/no-bid process exists so that you commit only when your real odds are well above that baseline.
A written decision does three things:
- It concentrates your best people on the bids you can actually win.
- It gives you a documented reason when you pass, which matters when a director asks why.
- It builds the record you need to get better at choosing.
Decide twice: at the shortlist and at the tender
Donor procurement for consulting services usually has two stages, and each deserves its own decision.
Gate 1: expression of interest or request to participate
For World Bank consulting selections, the client publishes a request for expressions of interest (REOI), builds a shortlist from the responses, and only then issues the request for proposals (RFP) to the shortlisted firms. For EU external-action service contracts above the restricted-procedure threshold (€300,000 in recent PRAG versions), firms apply in response to a contract notice and only shortlisted candidates receive the tender dossier.
At this gate you are judged mostly on firm-level experience, so the questions are narrower: are our references strong and recent enough to make the shortlist, and would we want this contract if we got there? An expression of interest is cheap. Declining after you have been shortlisted is not free, because it costs goodwill with a client you will meet again. Our guide to getting shortlisted covers this stage in detail.
Gate 2: RFP or tender dossier
Now you can see the terms of reference, the evaluation criteria and their points, the key expert requirements, the budget (often stated as a maximum in EU tenders), and the deadline. Recent PRAG versions give restricted-procedure tenderers at least 50 days from the invitation. This is where the expensive decision happens, and where the rest of this guide applies.
Knockout questions: stop if any answer is no
Before scoring anything, check the conditions that end the discussion on their own. If any answer is no and you cannot fix it before the deadline, the decision is no-bid.
- Are we and every partner eligible? Check the funder’s nationality and origin rules, and check every firm and key expert against the World Bank’s list of debarred firms and individuals or, for EU funding, the exclusion rules covered by the Early Detection and Exclusion System (EDES).
- Are we free of conflicts of interest? If your firm or a partner helped prepare the project, wrote the terms of reference, or would end up reviewing its own earlier work, that prior involvement can disqualify you. Read the conflict-of-interest clause and ask the client in writing if in doubt.
- Do we meet every minimum selection criterion? Turnover, the number and value of similar projects in the stated period, and any required certifications. If you only qualify with a partner, decide now whether a joint venture or subcontractor fixes the gap and whether the tender lets their references count; our JV guide explains how each option counts.
- Can we field qualified key experts for the whole assignment? Names, not placeholders. Under PRAG the successful tenderer has to confirm its key experts’ availability around award, and any replacement must score at least as well as the expert it replaces. Experts committed to several live bids are a real risk. Our guide to key expert CVs covers the exclusivity and availability rules.
- Can we submit a compliant proposal on time? Include translations, certified copies, partner agreements and the price, not just the writing.
- Can we accept the contract terms? Liability, payment schedule, currency, guarantees and security conditions. Donor contract templates leave little room to negotiate, so treat terms you cannot accept as a knockout rather than something to fix later.
Score what is left with a weighted matrix
If the tender passes every knockout, score it. Rate each criterion from 1 to 5, multiply by its weight, and divide by 5 so the total reads out of 100. The weights below lean on what donor evaluations actually reward: experience and key experts carry most of the technical points in consulting tenders.
| Criterion | Weight | Score 5 when | Score 1 when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Relevant experience | 20 | Three or more recent references that closely match the sector, scope and funder | Nothing directly comparable in the period the tender asks about |
| Key experts | 20 | Named, available for the whole assignment, and each clearly above the minimum requirements | Experts still to be found, or only just meeting the minimums |
| Understanding and methodology | 15 | You know the client, country and problem well enough to write a specific methodology | Your understanding comes only from the terms of reference |
| Competitive position | 15 | You have met the client, know the programme, and no competitor has an incumbent advantage | A competitor is the incumbent or shaped the project, and you have never met the client |
| Commercial fit | 15 | The budget covers your rates with a healthy margin; payment and currency terms are acceptable | The budget is below cost, or the terms carry risks you cannot price |
| Delivery capacity and risk | 10 | Team, partners and local presence are in place; security and logistics are manageable | Needs new partners, a new country set-up, or carries high security or logistics risk |
| Strategic value | 5 | Opens a priority client, country or sector | No value beyond the revenue |
Turn the total into a decision:
- 70 or more: go.
- 55 to 69: conditional go (see below).
- Below 55: no-bid.
Download the template: bid/no-bid scoring matrix (CSV). It opens in Excel or Google Sheets with the weights, the scoring descriptions, and formulas that total the score and return the decision.
Two habits make the matrix far more useful:
- Score independently, then compare. Ask two or three people to score on their own before discussing. Wide gaps on a criterion usually mean someone knows something the others do not.
- Calibrate against outcomes. These weights and thresholds are a starting point. After ten or so decided bids, compare the scores of the ones you won and lost, and adjust.
Check whether price can rescue a weak technical score
Teams often talk themselves into a weak bid by planning to win on price. Under quality-weighted evaluation, that rarely works. PRAG’s method for EU service tenders shows why:
- Only tenders with an average technical score of at least 75 points reach the financial evaluation.
- Technical scores are rescaled so the best tender gets 100 and the others get
their score / best score × 100. - Tenders above the maximum budget are eliminated. Of the rest, the lowest fees get 100 points and the others get
lowest fees / their fees × 100. - The final score weights technical quality against price 80/20:
0.8 × technical + 0.2 × financial.
A worked example
| Firm A | Firm B | |
|---|---|---|
| Technical score | 88 | 80 |
| Fees | €1,000,000 | €850,000 |
| Rescaled technical | 100.00 | 90.91 |
| Financial score | 85.00 | 100.00 |
| Final score | 97.00 | 92.73 |
Firm A wins despite being 15% more expensive. For Firm B to tie, its fees would have to fall to about €636,000, roughly 36% below Firm A. An eight-point technical gap is almost impossible to close with price. If your matrix shows weak key experts or thin experience, a lower price will not save the bid. Our guide to pricing fee-based tenders shows the other side: how far above the cheapest tender a strong technical offer can price.
World Bank selections work on the same principle. Quality- and cost-based selection (QCBS) is the most commonly used method for consulting services, financial proposals are opened only for firms that reach the minimum technical score, and the RFP states the quality/cost weighting and scoring formula. Read both before you price.
Sanity-check the economics
Before committing, compare what the bid is worth to what it costs to write:
expected margin = probability of winning × contract value × margin
Take a €1.2 million contract at a 15% margin. At a 20% chance of winning, the expected margin is €36,000. At 10%, it is €18,000. If the proposal will cost €25,000 in staff time, expert fees, translations and travel, the first case clears the bar and the second does not.
Use the shortlist size as a floor for the probability, then adjust it with your matrix score and your own win rate for similar bids. Strategic value can justify bidding below the line, for example to enter a priority country, but make that an explicit choice rather than a hopeful one.
Use conditional go deliberately
A conditional go means you will bid only if specific gaps close in time. Write each condition down with an owner and a date:
- “Go if the team leader confirms availability for the full 24 months by Friday.” (Owner: HR lead.)
- “Go if we sign a teaming agreement with a local partner holding two comparable references by the 15th.” (Owner: business development.)
If a condition is not met by its date, the decision becomes no-bid automatically. Without that rule, conditional bids drift into full proposals by default.
Record the decision and learn from the outcome
For every tender you consider, keep a short record:
- The decision, the score, and who made the call.
- The reasons, in a sentence or two, especially for no-bids.
- For bids you submit, the outcome, the winner, the price gap if known, and the debrief.
Ask for a debrief every time you lose. Under PRAG, unsuccessful tenderers can request further information, and the contracting authority may share comments on the strengths and weaknesses of their tender to help them in future tenders. Over a year, these records show which criteria actually predict wins for your firm, which is the only reliable way to tune the matrix. The win/loss analysis guide covers what to record and how to review it.
Sources
- European Commission, Contract procedures for European Union external action: a practical guide (PRAG). Service contracts, restricted procedure: shortlists, deadlines and evaluation.
- World Bank, Procurement Framework and Procurement Regulations for IPF Borrowers. Consulting services selection methods and shortlists.
- World Bank, Debarred firms and individuals.
Run this process in BidderOps
BidderOps keeps every go/no-go decision next to the opportunity it belongs to. Each opportunity shows a pursuit score with win probability and expected value, and the AI advisor weighs your win rate in the sector and country, the contract value, the time left and your relevant experience, then recommends go, no-go or conditional. The decision and its rationale are recorded, so you can compare them with outcomes later.