The same answer, written twice

Each pair sits under an evaluation criterion, because a sentence is only strong or weak relative to what it was asked to earn. The weaker version in every case is grammatical, professional and true. That is the point: what disqualifies it is that an evaluator cannot score it.

The excerpts are fictional, written about firms that do not exist. Nothing here is drawn from a customer’s response, and no number in an excerpt is a measurement — they are there to show what specificity looks like on the page.

The criterion: “Demonstrate an understanding of the District’s operating environment and the constraints affecting delivery.”

The weaker version could be pasted into any response to any buyer, which is what makes it unscoreable — it contains no claim an evaluator can agree or disagree with. The stronger version names a constraint the District knows to be true and shows it has consequences for the plan. An evaluator reading it learns that the package was read.

This section is also the cheapest place to establish credibility, because the material for it is in the solicitation. It requires no research, only that the document was read closely enough to notice what is difficult about the job.

The criterion: “Describe the proposed methodology, including how risks to the schedule will be identified and managed.”

Every word of the weaker version is a term the buyer has read in the last six proposals. “Proactively” and “best practices” carry no information — they describe an attitude, not a method, and an evaluator cannot distinguish this firm from any other on the strength of them.

The stronger version answers the question that was asked. It states how risk is handled — sequencing by reversibility, and a gate that can stop the work — rather than asserting that it is handled. It also gives the evaluator something to argue with, which is a feature: a criterion is scored by a person forming a view, and a paragraph that admits of no view gets the middle mark.

The criterion: “Provide references for comparable projects of similar size, scope and complexity completed within the last five years.”

The weaker version answers a question about volume. The criterion asked about comparability, and a count of projects is evidence of neither size, scope nor complexity — an evaluator has to take it on trust and cannot score it against the standard set.

The stronger version says why each reference is comparable, in the terms the criterion used, and names who will pick up the phone. It also does the harder thing: it concedes that one reference is smaller and explains what it is offered for instead. Handling the weakness first is what makes the rest of the claim credible.

No criterion, usually — and that is what makes it hard. The executive summary is read by the people who decide, often before anything else and sometimes instead of everything else.

The weaker version is about the bidder. Its first sentence is a formality, its second is a company profile, and neither tells a decision-maker what this proposal argues. It is also interchangeable — the same paragraph, with the nouns changed, sits at the front of most responses the buyer will read.

The stronger version states the buyer’s problem, the proposal’s answer to it, and the trade-off, in that order. Naming the trade-off is deliberate: the price difference will be noticed anyway, and a summary that explains it is more persuasive than one that leaves the evaluator to supply their own explanation.