Award criteria decide which of the admitted bids wins the contract. Unlike suitability criteria, which are a threshold, they are a comparative standard: they set the remaining bids against one another and score them on aspects fixed and announced in advance. The award generally goes to the most economically advantageous bid — which is expressly not the same as the cheapest.
Economically advantageous is not cheap
The most common misconception in public procurement is that the lowest price automatically wins. That holds only where the awarding body weights price at one hundred per cent, which happens with standardised supplies but is by no means the rule. On services, design work and complex projects, quality is regularly weighted substantially — sometimes more heavily than price. The revised procurement law has emphasised that orientation toward quality further. For suppliers that means: reading the scoring matrix is the most important step before costing, because it determines where the bid effort belongs.
What is assessed
Alongside price, different criteria come into play depending on contract type. On design and consulting services, typically the qualification and experience of the proposed key personnel and the methodological approach. On construction, programme, sequencing and quality assurance may feature. On IT projects, the solution concept, operating model and security aspects play a role. Sustainability aspects, life-cycle costs or service quality may be added where they relate objectively to the contract.
The weighting is the real information
The criteria themselves say less than their weighting. A procedure weighting quality at sixty and price at forty per cent demands a completely different bid strategy from one with the reverse split. In the first case effort in the qualitative section pays; in the second, sharp costing decides. That weighting must be announced in advance — it is in the tender documents and may not be altered afterwards. Ignoring it and submitting a broadly cheap bid means working past the assessment.
Separation from suitability
Award criteria may in principle not score again what was already tested as a threshold in the suitability check. Suitability asks whether a company meets the conditions; award asks which of the suitable bids is best. That separation is prescribed in law and matters practically, because it prevents larger suppliers being doubly favoured purely for their size. In practice the line is not always sharp, particularly where the experience of key personnel is scored as an award criterion — but there the point is the specific individuals proposed for this contract, not the company’s capability as such.
After the award: the debriefing
Following the award, unsuccessful suppliers are entitled to information on the essential reasons. Suppliers regularly leave that conversation unused, although it is the only direct feedback in the whole procedure. Learning on which criterion you fell short, and by how far, lets you improve the next bid deliberately. Without that information, improvement stays speculation — and across several procedures the difference compounds considerably.
Practical consequence
The scoring matrix belongs at the start of the work, not at the end. It answers where effort pays off, whether sharp costing or a strong qualitative section decides, and whether the procedure fits your profile. A company with strong references and experienced key personnel should seek quality-weighted procedures; one with cost advantages on standardised services, the price-weighted ones. That matching is economically more effective than any improvement to an individual bid.