Technical and Financial Bid

Two envelopes, in order

Government tenders are usually evaluated in two stages. The technical bid establishes whether you are eligible and capable — registration, turnover, past work, machinery, staff, certifications. The financial bid is your price, and it stays encrypted until the technical stage is complete.

The order is the important part. If your technical bid fails, your price is never opened. It does not matter that you were lowest; you were not in the comparison. Contractors who believe they keep losing on price are often not losing on price at all — they are being rejected earlier and assuming otherwise.

This is why encryption certificates matter, and why the documentation stage deserves more attention than the pricing stage.

What gets bids rejected technically

• A document missing. The most common reason and the most avoidable. Checklists exist in the tender document and are frequently not followed literally.
• An expired certificate. Registration, ISO, licence, DSC — anything with a date is worth verifying before submission.
• Wrong format. Affidavits and undertakings not on the required stamp paper or not in the tender's own format.
• Unsigned or unsealed pages where the tender requires each page signed.
• Bid capacity or eligibility not met, which should have been checked before bidding at all.
• EMD not correctly submitted, in the required form and by the required time.

Written 5 September 2026. Government requirements and portal behaviour change — message us to confirm before you rely on any date or figure here.

The practical lesson

Read the tender document twice: once to decide whether to bid, once as a checklist. The second reading is the one that wins work, and it is the one most contractors skip because it is tedious.

If you have lost several tenders without knowing why, ask the department for the evaluation position where they will share it, or send us the tender and your submission. The pattern is usually visible immediately.

Common questions