Evaluation criteria

Evaluation criteria are the published standards against which a buyer scores competing responses — the mandatory requirements, rated criteria, and weightings that together decide the award. In public procurement they must be disclosed in the solicitation and applied as written.

For a bidder, the criteria are the assignment brief. The weighting shows where points concentrate and therefore where hours belong: a grid weighted to technical approach and personnel rewards evidence-rich writing; a grid weighted to price rewards a hard costing conversation before submission. Criteria cannot lawfully be changed after closing to rescue a preferred bidder — when that appears to happen, it is the factual core of a bid challenge. Draft against the grid, criterion by criterion, not against a generic template of what proposals usually say.

@misc{pi-2026-definitions-evaluation-criteria,
  author = {{The Procurement Institution}},
  title  = {Evaluation criteria — definition},
  year   = {2026},
  url    = {https://procurementinstitution.org/definitions/evaluation-criteria},
  note   = {Release 2026.10}
}