Evaluation score simulator

How price usually gets scored

The lowest bid takes the full allocation.

The most common method gives the lowest-priced compliant bid the entire price allocation, and scores every other bid proportionally: your price score is the lowest price divided by your price, multiplied by the points available. A bid 10 percent above the lowest gets roughly 91 percent of the price points.

That formula is what this simulator uses. Others exist, including linear scales between a floor and a ceiling, scoring against the average bid, and simple pass-or-fail affordability tests. They behave very differently, so read the basis of selection before assuming the shape of the trade-off.

Weighting decides the strategy

The technical to price split tells you where to spend effort.

A 70 to 30 split in favour of technical rewards a stronger response, and a small technical gain can absorb a meaningful price premium. A 30 to 70 split does the opposite: past a compliant response, additional quality earns very little and the bid is effectively a price competition with a quality gate.

Work out early which one you are in. Teams routinely spend weeks improving a technical response in a competition where the weighting made price decisive, or price aggressively in one where the points were sitting in the technical volume.

• Technical heavy: strength above the minimum pays
• Price heavy: clear the bar efficiently, then sharpen price
• Lowest price technically acceptable: quality above the bar earns nothing

Two ways to close a gap

Price and points are interchangeable, up to a limit.

When you are behind, the simulator shows both routes: the price that would tie at your current technical score, and the technical score that would tie at your current price. Frequently one is achievable and the other is not, which is a useful thing to know before the final pricing meeting.

There is a limit. Where the technical gap is wider than the entire price allocation, no price change wins the bid, including bidding zero. That is worth establishing early, because it turns the question from how to price into whether to bid.

What the model leaves out

Real evaluations carry more than two numbers.

Mandatory criteria come first and are pass or fail: a bid that misses one is set aside before any of this arithmetic happens. Past performance is often scored separately, price realism can adjust an evaluated price upward, and some evaluations normalise or cap outliers.

Use this to understand the shape of the competition and to test the sensitivity of your position, not to predict a result. The most valuable output is usually the realisation that a bid you thought was close was not, or that one you were about to walk away from was.