Why a no-bid is a decision, not a failure
Every tender you price costs money whether you win it or not. The World Bank's standard Request for Bids for Works puts it plainly: the bidder bears all the costs of preparing and submitting its bid, whatever the conduct or outcome of the bidding process, and the costs of visiting the site are at the bidder's own expense. Expect the same rule in most tenders, and check the instructions to bidders in yours.
The cost is not only cash. Your estimator and bid team can prepare only so many compliant bids in a month, so a weak bid also takes the hours that a stronger one needed. Saying no to a tender you are unlikely to win frees those hours for one you are better placed to win.
Research points the same way about what to look at. A 2022 meta-analysis in the journal Buildings reviewed 24 studies of contractors' bid decisions published between 1988 and 2021 and identified 28 critical factors. The top five were project payment terms, the client's financial capacity, the client's reputation in the industry, the client's payment history on past projects, and project size. Most of those are about the client, which is why the client comes first in the checklist below.
The six factors and their weights
Score each factor from 1 (strongly against bidding) to 5 (strongly in favour), and write down the reason and the evidence behind each score, not just the number. These are the six factors and the fixed weights Bidligence's Bid Score uses. The weights add up to 100, and project fit and capability carry the most, because a job you cannot qualify for or deliver well is lost before price is even compared.
| Factor | Weight | What to look at |
|---|---|---|
| Client & relationship | 15 | Payment record and credibility, where the money comes from (government budget, development bank, private), your relationship with the client, and the chance of repeat work. |
| Project fit | 20 | The scope against your specialisations, the contract size against your annual turnover, and the site against the regions where you already work. |
| Capability & resources | 20 | Key personnel, certifications, plant and past-project evidence, checked against the tender's mandatory requirements and qualification criteria. |
| Competition | 15 | How many firms are likely to bid, whether there is an incumbent, any local preference rules, and the evaluation method: a lowest-price contest is harder to win on merit than one with rated technical criteria. |
| Profitability | 15 | Margin potential, payment terms, the currency you will be paid in, price adjustment for escalation, liquidated damages and the cost of bonds and securities. |
| Risk & conditions | 15 | How the contract allocates risk, whether the programme is realistic, site access, security and logistics, and environmental, social and local-content obligations. |
A single fatal gap overrides the arithmetic. If you cannot meet a pass/fail requirement, such as a mandatory licence, a minimum turnover or a specific-experience criterion, and cannot close it with a joint venture or a subcontractor the tender allows, it is a no-bid whatever the total says.
A worked score (illustrative)
To turn the six scores into one number, multiply each score by its weight, add the results and divide by 5. With weights that total 100, the result runs from 20 (every factor at 1) to 100 (every factor at 5). The example below is illustrative: a mid-sized drainage and culvert contract from a client the firm has worked for before, in a region where it already operates, with a specialist bridge element it has no track record in.
| Factor | Weight | Score (1 to 5) | Points (weight × score ÷ 5) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Client & relationship | 15 | 4 | 12 |
| Project fit | 20 | 3 | 12 |
| Capability & resources | 20 | 2 | 8 |
| Competition | 15 | 3 | 9 |
| Profitability | 15 | 3 | 9 |
| Risk & conditions | 15 | 3 | 9 |
| Total | 100 | 59: conditional |
Reading the result
Bidligence reads the total as bid at 65 or more, conditional from 45 to 64 and no-bid below 45. You can use your own thresholds, but fix them before you score, not after. At 59 this tender is conditional, and the table shows why: capability is the factor holding it down. If the firm brings in a joint-venture partner with bridge experience and capability is re-scored from 2 to 3, the total becomes 63; at 4 it becomes 67 and crosses into bid. A conditional result is a list of things to fix before you commit the bid team, not a soft yes.
The break-even win rate
The score tells you whether a job fits. The break-even win rate tells you whether bids like it can pay for themselves. If a bid costs C to prepare and would earn a profit P if you win, then across many similar bids the expected value of bidding is (win rate × P) − C. That is zero when the win rate equals C ÷ P, so:
Required win rate = cost of bidding ÷ expected profit if won, where the expected profit if won is the contract value × your expected profit margin.
Illustrative example: a bid costs 15,000 to prepare, the contract is worth 2,000,000 and you expect an 8% profit margin. The expected profit if won is 2,000,000 × 8% = 160,000, so the required win rate is 15,000 ÷ 160,000 = 9.4%, a little under one win in every ten bids like it. If the margin is only 4%, the profit falls to 80,000 and the required win rate doubles to 18.75%, close to one in five. If the bid instead costs 40,000, because of a remote site visit, specialist design input and translation, the required rate at 8% is 25%: one win in every four bids.
Then compare the result with your real record on comparable work: the same kind of client, the same procurement method and a similar size. If you win one in eight of these and the arithmetic needs one in four, the tender needs a better reason than its size.
Break-even calculator
Enter the cost of preparing the bid, the contract value and the profit margin you expect, all in the same currency. The calculator works out the share of bids like this one you would need to win for them to cover their own preparation. It runs entirely in your browser: nothing you type is sent anywhere or stored.
Use the same definition of profit every time. If your margin is after head-office overheads, a win also recovers overheads, so the break-even you get is a cautious one. If you use contribution before overheads, say so on the decision record.
Break-even win rate
Any currency, as long as all three are the same. Nothing you type leaves this page.
You need to win at least 9.4% of bids like this one — about 1 in 10 — for them to pay for their own preparation. If your record on this kind of work is lower, this tender needs a better reason than its size.
What to count in the cost of bidding
This is the number most firms underestimate, because the largest part is staff time that never appears on an invoice. Count:
- Estimating and bid-team hours at their full cost to the business, including the planners, technical writers and managers who review the bid.
- The site visit and pre-bid meeting: travel, accommodation and time.
- Tender document fees, where the employer charges them.
- The bid security: the fee a bank or insurer charges for a guarantee, or the cash or credit tied up in a cheque or letter of credit for the whole validity period. See bid security and bid validity.
- Specialist inputs: design checks, surveys, geotechnical review, and the time spent getting supplier and subcontractor quotations.
- Translation, certified copies, notarisation, printing and courier costs for documents that must be delivered by hand.
Keep score
Record every tender you pass on and the outcome of every bid you submit. That gives you the two figures the arithmetic needs: your win rate on comparable work, and your bid-hit ratio, the number of bids submitted for each win. A hit ratio of 5:1 is the same as winning 20% of the bids you submit.
Donor-funded and remote-site tenders
Tenders financed by development banks add checks that belong in the decision, and several of them are pass/fail. As of October 2026, the latest edition of the World Bank's standard Request for Bids for Works, two-envelope with rated criteria (September 2025), works like this: the financial envelopes stay sealed until the technical parts have been evaluated, only bidders found substantially responsive and qualified have theirs opened, and technical factors then count alongside price. Borrowers adapt the standard document through the bid data sheet, so confirm every point below in the tender itself.
- Qualification criteria are pass/fail. The standard document's criteria include a minimum average annual construction turnover, a minimum number of similar contracts completed in a stated period, and access to financial resources such as liquid assets and lines of credit. Check these before anything else: a fail is a no-bid unless a joint venture or a specialist subcontractor the tender allows closes it.
- The bid security has a cost. Depending on what the employer specifies, the bid carries either a bid security, such as an unconditional guarantee from a bank or a non-bank financial institution (an insurance, bonding or surety company), an irrevocable letter of credit or a cashier's or certified cheque, or a bid-securing declaration.
- Local labour. The September 2025 revision added a requirement that, unless the bid data sheet says otherwise, bidders allocate not less than 30% of the total labour cost under the contract to local labour, which excludes the contractor's foreign personnel, and submit a Local Labour Method Statement. On a remote site, find out early whether that labour exists where the work is.
- Logistics and mobilisation. Sea or air freight, a camp, security and a long mobilisation period belong under risk and profitability, and in the cost of bidding if you have to visit the site to price them.
For where these tenders are published, see development-bank tenders, Papua New Guinea and the Pacific. How the World Bank documents are laid out is covered in World Bank bidding documents explained.
How Bidligence does this from the tender
Bidligence's Bid Score runs this checklist once a tender has been analysed. It scores the six factors above at the same fixed weights, each from 1 to 5 with its reasons and the signals it used, reading the tender analysis, your company profile, the files in your Evidence Vault, your approved library content and your record of wins and losses. The total is arithmetic, not a model's opinion: the same factor scores always give the same Bid Score. It recommends bid at 65 or more, conditional from 45 to 64 and no-bid below 45; when it scores a tender afresh, it can make a stricter call than the total if a single fatal gap exists, and explains why.
Alongside the score, Bidligence estimates how many hours a compliant bid of this size takes and turns them into a cost to bid at a default blended bid-team rate, which you can overwrite with your own figure. Its break-even calculator divides that cost by the expected profit at your margin, both in your home currency.
Where a factor is weak, you can close the gap and re-score: upload the missing evidence, such as CVs, certificates or past projects, or record a commitment, such as hiring an HSE manager or bringing in a joint-venture partner. Commitments earn partial credit on a re-score and are written into the bid documents as commitments, never as experience you already have. When all you have done since the last score is add evidence or commitments, a re-score can raise a factor but never lower it. If anything else it reads has changed, such as the tender analysis, your company profile, your library or your bid record, or you withdraw a commitment or remove or change a file, the tender is scored afresh.
Bidligence advises; you decide. Passing on a tender records it as passed, and Bidligence's analytics show your win rate, your bid-hit ratio and how the bids in each Bid Score band actually turned out, so you can test whether your screening works. Once you confirm your e-mail, a new account's 500 welcome credits let you analyse a tender, get its Bid Score and see its BOQ priced. See AI tender analysis for what the analysis reads out of the tender.
Questions
- What is a bid/no-bid decision?
- The decision, made early in a tender, on whether to spend the time and money a bid takes. It weighs how well the job fits your firm against what the bid will cost and how often bids like it are won.
- How do you calculate the break-even win rate for a bid?
- Divide the cost of preparing the bid by the profit you would make if you won it, which is the contract value × your expected margin. In an illustrative case, a bid costing 15,000 for a 2,000,000 contract at an 8% margin needs a win rate of about 9.4%.
- What is a good bid-hit ratio?
- There is no single right figure: it depends on the procurement method, the number of bidders and how selective you are. Measure your own ratio on comparable work, and compare the win rate it implies with the break-even rate for the tender in front of you.
- What should a bid/no-bid checklist include?
- At least the client, project fit, your capability and resources, competition, profitability and risk, plus a check of every pass/fail requirement. Weight the factors, score each one with a reason, and record the decision either way.
- Is it worth bidding just to stay visible to a client?
- Sometimes, but treat it as a marketing cost and decide on purpose. If the arithmetic says the bid cannot pay for itself, write down the other reason for bidding so you can test it later.
- Does Bidligence make the decision for us?
- No. The Bid Score recommends bid, conditional or no-bid with the reasons for each factor, and your team records the decision. Tenders you pass on stay on record for your analytics.
Sources
Rules and portals change. Check the tender’s own documents and the official source before you rely on any of this.