In short: every major tender turns on four decisions: whether to pursue it, how to bid, what price to commit to and whether the offer can be defended. Each one needs an owner, written criteria and a written output. When a gate has none of these, the decision does not disappear. It is taken implicitly, by whoever is in the room, usually too late.
The four gates
| Gate | Question | Owner | Written output |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 · Qualification | Should we pursue it? | Commercial director | GO / NO-GO |
| 02 · Strategy | How should we bid? | Bid director | Bid strategy charter |
| 03 · Price | What should we commit to? | Executive committee | Price authorisation |
| 04 · Readiness | Can we defend the offer? | Executive sponsor | Release to submit |
The owners above are typical for a contractor or utility group bidding lump-sum EPC, BOT or DBOM work. The titles change from one organisation to another; the principle does not. One named person decides at each gate, against criteria written before the tender arrived.
What goes wrong at each gate
- Gate 01: the bid is pursued because the client is strategic or the team is available, not because the tender passes the criteria. The real NO-GO arrives weeks later, after the bid budget is spent.
- Gate 02: no written win strategy. Each author writes a good section, and the offer as a whole says nothing the evaluators can score.
- Gate 03: the price is authorised on a single number, with no stated confidence level and no view of where the margin is exposed.
- Gate 04: the release to submit is a formality on the last day, when nothing can still change.
How to test your own gates
- Can you name the owner of each gate on your current tender?
- Are the criteria written, and were they written before this tender?
- Does each gate leave a dated, signed output?
- Has a gate ever stopped a bid, or sent it back?
If one of the four answers is no for a gate, that gate is where your decisions slip. Our bid gates and methods work starts there; a single tender can be checked first with a tender diagnostic.
Also published on the Cover Intelligence LinkedIn page.