Procurement and tendering questions
This competency is where assessors most often ask for advice rather than description, because choosing a route is an advisory act with consequences the client lives with. Expect to be asked why you recommended what you did, and what you would have recommended if one of the client's priorities had been different.
Procurement & tendering
Advise on the appropriateness of procurement routes; manage the tendering and negotiation process and report on the outcome. Core to Level 3.
What the assessor is listening for
- That you start from the client's priorities (time, cost certainty, quality, risk appetite) and reason to a route, not the other way round.
- That you can describe the mechanics of a tender you ran, including how fairness was preserved.
- That you evaluate on more than the lowest number, and can say how the criteria were weighted and agreed.
- That you know the difference between the route, the contract form and the pricing mechanism, and do not use them interchangeably.
Level 1
Knowledge & understanding - you can explain the principle.
- What procurement routes have you worked with, and what does each do to risk?A strong answer covers: The routes by name and, for each, who carries design risk and who carries cost and time risk. The distinction between the route and the form of contract that sits under it.
- What is the difference between a procurement route, a form of contract and a pricing mechanism?A strong answer covers: Route as how the team is assembled and risk allocated; form as the legal terms; pricing mechanism as how the money is calculated. An example of one route running under two different forms.
Level 2
Application - you have done it yourself and can describe how.
- Tell me about a tender process you ran, from list to recommendation.A strong answer covers: How the list was arrived at, what was issued and when, how queries were handled and shared, the return and opening arrangements, the arithmetic and qualification checks, and what your report recommended.
- How do you keep a tender process fair?A strong answer covers: Identical information to all tenderers, queries answered to the whole list, a common return deadline and opening procedure, and a documented evaluation against the criteria issued at the start.
- A tenderer returns a bid with qualifications attached. What do you do?A strong answer covers: Reading them properly, pricing the ones that carry cost or risk, deciding whether they make the bid non-compliant, going back for withdrawal or clarification, and how that is reported to the client on a like-for-like basis.
Level 3
Reasoned advice & depth of judgement - you have advised others and can justify decisions and trade-offs.
- A client wants both early start on site and cost certainty. What do you advise?A strong answer covers: That the two pull against each other, the routes that trade between them, what each would cost the client in the other currency, and a recommendation with the conditions it depends on.
- How would you advise a client whose preferred contractor is the most expensive tenderer?A strong answer covers: Testing whether the criteria issued at the start support that award, what the price difference buys, the risk of an award that cannot be justified against the published criteria, and the recommendation.
- What would you change about how your organisation procures, and why?A strong answer covers: A specific, defensible change with the reasoning, what it would improve, and what it would cost or risk. Reasoned advice about your own practice is exactly what Level 3 asks for.
How candidates lose this one
Listing routes as a menu. The panel wants the reasoning that picks one, applied to a real client.
Claiming to have advised when you administered someone else's decision. Say plainly which it was.
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