Screen tender notices against delivery capabilities
Compare new tender documents with the work your team can actually deliver. Prepare a shortlist with eligibility evidence, deadlines and unresolved commercial questions.
How this works
Tender screening is a document review task with hard eligibility gates. A superficially attractive opportunity can be unsuitable because the buyer requires a reference, certification, delivery location or submission condition the company cannot meet.
This workflow turns a feed of notices into a bounded commercial review queue. It preserves unknowns and source passages, so a missed attachment or ambiguous requirement does not become a confident rejection. Bid preparation and submission are separate activities.
Before you start
Screening criteria
Agree mandatory exclusions, preferred markets and the conditions that require a human decision.
Capability evidence
Use current references, certifications and delivery-capacity facts approved for internal screening.
Access scope
Collect only authorized documents; record unavailable portal attachments for manual retrieval.
Prepare the inputs
- notices
- Required
notice ID, date and document set
Check amendments, document versions and duplicates across feeds.
- capabilities
- Required
structured capability and reference records
Include expiry dates and evidence owners; marketing claims alone do not prove eligibility.
- criteria
- Required
mandatory gates and review preferences
Keep hard exclusions separate from weighted preferences; do not invent a scoring formula.
Implementation, step by step
Create one opportunity record
- Deduplicate notices by procurement reference, buyer and deadline. Retain amendment history.
- Inventory attachments and identify the authoritative deadline including timezone; flag missing documents.
Checkpoint: Each opportunity has a unique ID and a completeness status.
Extract the decision facts
- Capture scope, location, dates, required experience, certifications, commercial structure and submission conditions.
- Attach a document and page reference to every mandatory requirement. Preserve conditional wording and exceptions.
Checkpoint: The requirement table can be checked against the original tender.
Check mandatory gates
- Compare each gate with supplied company evidence, distinguishing met, not met and unknown.
- Do not treat absence in a capability export as proof the company lacks that capability; request confirmation from its owner.
Checkpoint: Every exclusion has a cited requirement and an explicit factual basis.
Assess delivery and commercial fit
- Summarize resource needs and dependencies for the delivery lead. Use only supplied cost assumptions for rough arithmetic.
- State the uncertainty in effort and price comparisons; a model-generated estimate cannot justify a definitive profitability claim.
Checkpoint: Fit notes separate known constraints from assumptions needing review.
Prepare the shortlist
- Group records into pursue-review, clarify and documented exclusion using the agreed rules.
- Show deadlines and time-critical unknowns first. Include the source packet and a short explanation for each recommendation.
Checkpoint: A commercial owner can make the next decision without re-finding documents.
Record the review outcome
- Capture the owner’s decision and the reason it differs from the initial screening.
- Recheck amendments before handing a selected opportunity to bid preparation and retain rejected opportunities for quality sampling.
Checkpoint: The queue has a dated decision trail and a named next owner.
Decisions along the way
A mandatory attachment is unavailable
Mark screening incomplete and request permitted access or an export.
Capability evidence expires before delivery
Route for confirmation rather than assuming renewal.
The deadline is ambiguous
Escalate immediately and preserve all conflicting date passages.
What you will produce
tender-screening.csv
CSVA review queue, not an automated bid commitment.
Include: opportunity_id · deadline · scope · gate_results · fit_status · unknowns · review_owner
requirements-evidence.csv
CSVThe audit trail supporting every eligibility recommendation.
Include: opportunity_id · requirement · source_page · company_evidence · result
Check the result
- Sample rejected opportunities for false exclusions.
- Verify amendment and deadline handling before each review.
- Ensure no mandatory condition is hidden inside a narrative summary.
When something goes wrong
Portal blocks automated retrieval
Stop at the access boundary and request a human-provided document.
Feed repeats a changed notice
Update the existing record and explicitly mark changed conditions.
A worked example
SYNTHETIC EXAMPLE · NOT A REPORTED BUSINESS RESULT
Request
Synthetic: screen three maintenance tenders.
Inputs
T1 requires an active certificate held by the team. T2 requires a reference not present in the library. T3 requires delivery outside the approved service area.
Expected result
T1 enters pursue-review, T2 remains clarify with a reference-owner question, and T3 is excluded with its location requirement attached. No bid is submitted.
Run a small pilot
Start small
One feed and a representative batch containing accepted and rejected historical opportunities.
Record the baseline
Compare with a commercial reviewer’s decisions and record manual screening time.
Agree success criteria
Agree acceptable missed-opportunity and missed-disqualification rates before expanding.
Stop or revise
Pause definitive recommendations if documents or capability evidence are incomplete.
Keep the scope clear
- Screening does not certify legal eligibility or promise profitability.
- Do not bypass access controls, contact buyers or submit bids without the relevant authorization.
Check before using
A commercial owner confirms eligibility, capacity and whether to pursue each opportunity.
Business activities
- Handle inbound enquiries
- Find and approach prospects
FROM A RECIPE TO YOUR WORKFLOW
Bring the company context together.
This workflow needs reliable inputs before it needs a better prompt. Moat8 Vault brings working information into a readable archive for the AI tools you use.
For this recipe: Tender notices and attachments · Capability and reference library · Bid screening rules
Start with one recurring task, agree which sources to use, and review the first result with your team.
Discuss this workflow