How government evaluates bids — understanding scoring grids and rated criteria

Every government bid you submit gets turned into numbers. A panel of evaluators reads your proposal, checks it against a fixed set of rules, and gives it a score. If you understand how that scoring works before you write a single word, you can build a bid that actually scores well — not just one that sounds good to you.

What a scoring grid actually is

A scoring grid (sometimes called an evaluation matrix or evaluation grid) is the tool a buyer uses to mark your bid. It lists every requirement in the tender, tells evaluators how many points each one is worth, and gives instructions on how to award those points fairly.

Buyers build the scoring grid before the tender is even published. This matters, because it means the questions were written to match the scoring, not the other way around. If a section of the request for proposal (RFP) asks about your project team's experience, there is almost certainly a line in the scoring grid worth a set number of points for exactly that answer.

Most Canadian public sector buyers use some version of the same basic model:

• Mandatory (or pass/fail) requirements — things you must have, like a licence, insurance, or a minimum number of years in business. Miss one and your bid is thrown out, no matter how good the rest of it is.
• Rated (or scored) criteria — things that earn points on a sliding scale, like the quality of your project plan, your team's relevant experience, or your approach to managing risk.
• Price — usually scored separately and then combined with your technical score using a set formula.

Mandatory vs rated — the gate and the ladder

It helps to picture mandatory requirements as a gate and rated criteria as a ladder. You have to get through the gate before anyone even looks at how high you can climb.

A mandatory requirement is answered with a simple yes or no. Either you meet it or you don't — there's no partial credit. This is the single biggest reason well-qualified businesses lose bids: they submit a strong, well-written proposal that quietly fails to tick one mandatory box, and the evaluator never gets to read the rest. We cover this trap in detail in mandatory vs rated requirements — why one disqualifying mistake costs you the contract.

Rated criteria are different. They're scored on a scale, often 0 to 5 or 0 to 10, based on how well your answer meets what the buyer is asking for. A weak answer might get 1 or 2 points. A strong, specific, evidence-backed answer can get full marks. This is where bids are actually won or lost, because almost every compliant bidder clears the mandatory gate — the ladder is where the real competition happens.

How the weighting usually breaks down

Every tender sets its own weights, but most Canadian government evaluations follow a similar shape. Here's a general guide to what you'll typically see, though you should always check the specific RFP for exact figures.

Evaluation component	Typical weight	What it usually covers
Mandatory requirements	Pass/fail (0% weight, but a hard gate)	Licences, insurance, security clearance, minimum experience
Technical / rated criteria	60–80% of the scored total	Approach, methodology, team experience, past performance, quality plan
Price	20–40% of the scored total	Your bid price, scored against a formula relative to other bidders
Social or policy criteria	0–15%, growing in many tenders	Canadian content, Indigenous participation, sustainability, accessibility

Notice how much weight usually sits on rated criteria rather than price alone. A lot of small businesses assume the lowest price wins. In practice, most best value evaluations (as opposed to pure lowest-price tenders) weight technical quality more heavily than price. Writing a thin proposal to save time, and hoping your price will carry you, is usually a losing strategy.

Inside the evaluation room

Understanding the mechanics of how your bid gets scored makes the whole process feel less like a black box.

1. Multiple evaluators score independently. Most buyers use a panel of two or more people who read and score your bid on their own, without discussing it with each other first. This is meant to reduce bias.
2. Scores are consolidated. After individual scoring, the panel meets to compare notes. Big gaps between evaluators are usually discussed and sometimes reconciled into a consensus score.
3. Scoring follows a rubric, not a gut feeling. Evaluators are usually given guidance on what a 1 versus a 5 looks like for each question, so they're not just marking based on impression.
4. Only what's in the document counts. Evaluators score what you wrote, not what you meant, not what your sales rep said on the phone, and not your reputation. If it's not on the page, it doesn't exist for scoring purposes.
5. Price is scored last, often separately. Many formulas score price on a curve — the lowest compliant bid gets full marks, and every other bid gets proportionally fewer points as its price rises above the lowest.

Common ways bidders lose points they didn't need to lose

Most lost points aren't about being the wrong company for the job. They're about how the proposal was written. Watch for these patterns:

• Answering the wrong question. Evaluators score against the specific wording of the rated criterion, not a general impression of your company. If the question asks for your approach to risk management and you write about your company history instead, you score low even if the history is impressive.
• Being vague instead of specific. "We have extensive experience" scores worse than "we delivered three comparable janitorial contracts for municipal buildings between 5,000 and 15,000 square feet over the past four years." Numbers, names, and dates earn points. Adjectives don't.
• Burying the answer. If the evaluator has to hunt for your response, you risk losing marks simply because it's hard to find. Structure your answer so it maps directly onto the question, ideally using the buyer's own headings and numbering.
• Ignoring the word or page limit. Some buyers cap sections and simply won't read past the limit. Anything beyond it may never be scored.
• Ticking the box instead of proving it. Saying "yes, we comply" earns far fewer points than showing how you comply, with a process, a document, or a named example.

How Buy Canadian and reciprocal procurement rules are changing the grid

Scoring grids are also starting to reflect newer federal priorities. Since December 2025, Canada's Buy Canadian Policy has been giving Canadian suppliers an evaluation advantage on certain federal contracts, currently focused on large strategic-sector procurements, with the threshold expected to widen through 2026. On big infrastructure and construction contracts, buyers are also starting to build Canadian-content rules for materials like steel, aluminum, and wood directly into the mandatory and rated requirements.

Alongside this, new reciprocal procurement rules due in spring 2026 are expected to limit most non-defence federal contracts to Canadian suppliers and suppliers from trusted trade partners. If this applies to a tender you're eyeing, it can shift not just who is even eligible to bid, but how the scoring grid awards points for domestic content and supply chains. If your business could be affected, is your business tariff-exposed? What Buy Canadian rules mean for your bid strategy walks through what to check first.

A new Small Business Procurement Program, rolling out through 2026, is also expected to bring proportional requirements scaled to a bid's size, a shared "Tell Us Once" attestation system so you don't re-submit the same paperwork for every bid, and plainer tender summaries. Together, these changes are meant to make scoring grids more accessible to smaller suppliers who don't have a dedicated bid-writing team.

Writing to the grid, not just to yourself

The single most useful habit you can build is to write your proposal as a direct mirror of the scoring grid, when the buyer publishes one, or of the rated criteria list when they don't. For each rated question, answer it directly, back it up with a specific example, and stop. Don't make the evaluator dig through marketing language to find your actual answer.

A few practical habits that tend to raise scores:

• Copy the buyer's exact question or heading into your response before you answer it, so the evaluator can match your text to their grid line by line.
• Lead each answer with the direct response, then support it with evidence — not the other way around.
• Use the buyer's own terminology, not your internal jargon. If they call it a "risk register," don't call it a "risk log."
• Keep a reusable library of proof points — project names, outcomes, certifications — so you're not writing from scratch every time. A strong capability statement is a good place to build this library once and reuse it across bids.

If you lose a bid and want to know exactly where your score fell short, most buyers will tell you if you ask. We cover that process in what happens after you submit — inside the government bid evaluation process.

Scoring grids can feel bureaucratic, but they're really just a checklist made visible. Once you can see the checklist, writing to it gets a lot easier. Start by browsing live tenders close to your industry, read the evaluation criteria before you decide to bid, and build your proposal around the grid from the first line rather than trying to fit it in afterwards.