Why Tender Interviews are Broken

You’re sitting there with a pen, a scoring sheet and maybe a few too many coffees. A team of contractors walks in, does their pitch and you try to judge, whether they’re the right team to deliver a multi-million pound project.

Sometimes the choice is obvious. Most of the time? It’s not. If the team have done their jobs right up to that point, you should be interviewing a tender list of equally capable contractors all keen to secure the project.

What looks like a well-oiled post-tender scoring process is often anything but I’ve sat through more of these interviews than I can count—on the client side and I’ve seen the same issues crop up again and again.

The truth is, that the way the industry runs and scores contractor interviews is outdated, inconsistent and surprisingly easy to get wrong.

Let’s be honest about the problems. Because unless we’re willing to admit them, we won’t fix them.

1. We’re still using paper, pens and spreadsheets to make million-pound decisions

It’s 2025, yet most teams still show up to interviews with a printed-out scoring sheet and a biro. Some use Excel, although it's challenging to ‘live’ score with excel and aggregate the scores at the end of the day to have an informed discussion/decision.

When we’re making high-stakes decisions choosing our delivery partners, risking reputation and real money shouldn’t we have something better than a crude excel template that gets recycled from project to project?

We talk about rigour and fairness. But when the tools we use don’t support either, we’re relying too much on good intentions.

2. Everyone’s scoring based on different priorities

Let’s say there are five of you on the scoring panel. Are you all judging the team on the same criteria? Maybe. But are you giving those criteria the same weight? Probably not.

One of you cares most about finance, another on programme and invariably quality of design. Without proper alignment beforehand, people are quietly making up their own versions of what “good” looks like.

That’s how two people can watch the same interview and give wildly different scores. Not because they disagree on performance, but because they’re judging different things.

This kind of misalignment happens more often than people admit. And it creates confusion, friction, and sometimes, the wrong outcome.

3. Bias creeps in more than we’d like to believe

We’re all human. We’re drawn to confidence. Familiarity. A good handshake. A nice PowerPoint deck.

The best-fit contractor isn’t always the best-presenting one. But in the heat of an interview, when the notes are flying and time is tight, gut feel can easily overtake careful judgment.

Even the most experienced panellists fall into this trap. It’s not about being careless, it’s about not having a system that helps keep things objective when it matters most.

Too often teams take little notice of the detailed technical submission from the bidders, and rely solely on interview performance. It’s imperative that both are factored into the assessment process, either directly or at least ensuring the professional team has structured interview questions to address specific issues they have identified within the technical documents.

4. Feedback is vague, and learning is lost

After the interviews, we’re often requested to give feedback to the unsuccessful teams, and quite frankly I feel it's professional courtesy, knowing how much time and effort (and cost) the unsuccessful contractors will have spent on their bids. But let’s be honest, how often do we have enough structured notes to provide meaningful feedback?

Most of the time, the comments are too vague (“it was close, but another team edged it”) or too vague (“we weren’t sure about your delivery plan”). That doesn’t help anyone improve.

Meanwhile, the insights from the interview, the things that could help a contractor in future interviews disappear into someone’s notebook or never get written down at all.

We Can Do Better

Now imagine if we flipped the process.

What if you could build a scoring framework before the interviews? One that was tailored to your client, your brief, and the things that matter most on that project?

What if everyone on the panel had a shared view of what they’re scoring, and how much each scoring area counts?

What if scores were captured digitally, in real-time, with prompts to help people stay consistent and focused?

What if, at the end, you could instantly see the results. Not just the numbers, but the reasoning behind them? The outliers. The strengths. The weak spots.

And what if that feedback could be packaged up and shared back with bidders in a clear, constructive way?

That’s not wishful thinking. That’s what we’re building.

BidScore.io

BidScore is a new powerful scoring platform built specifically to empower clients and project teams to make the RIGHT contractor appointments.

It helps project managers, cost consultants and clients run more structured, fair and transparent interviews, without making the process longer or more complicated.

Here’s how it works:

1. Scoring setup wizard – Before you issue your tenders, you build your scoring framework using a guided tool. You decide the criteria, value drivers, set the weightings and align the panel. (You can share this information with the tenderers)

2. Live scoring interface – During the interviews, each panelist logs in and scores in real-time, on their own device. It’s clean, simple, and designed to keep people focused on what matters.

3. Instant insights – After the interview, BidScore collates the results automatically You get immediate visuals showing score spreads, inconsistencies and overall ranking. Plus, all the notes are there for feedback and audit trails.

No more complicated scoring spreadsheets. No more lost notes. In doing so, Bidscore provides robust, defensible assessment that empowers a client and their team to select the RIGHT contractor, not necessarily the CHEAPEST.

Built by People Who’ve Been in the Room

This isn’t a generic tool cooked up by someone who’s never worked in the industry.

I’ve worked with clients, contractors, PMs, and QSs across hundreds of projects and I’ve seen how broken the interview scoring process can be.

BidScore.io was born out of frustration, but it’s being built with optimism. I believe we can make this part of the tender process smarter, fairer and better for everyone involved.

And I know I’m not the only one who feels this way.

Tired of the same old broken tender process?

If you're ready to transform the way your team shows up and stands out in interviews, let's talk.

intrigued?

If you’re intrigued by our concept, please join the waiting list. You’ll be the first to hear about our launch and you’ll have the chance to shape the future of the product.