Can You Change Evaluators During the Evaluation?

TRANSCRIPT OF THE VIDEO

So, the question before us today is whether you can change a Tender Evaluation Team Member during the evaluation process? That is an interesting question.

Good day everyone, Simon here from Shrewd, we provide commercial support to the Commonwealth, to help the Commonwealth successfully deliver value for money projects.

The Evaluation Team

So, when you stand up an evaluation team, they're all comprised of members, obviously, so what's the evaluation team? Let me just back the truck up for a second there. The evaluation team are those people that are going to do the technical evaluation of your tender.

What I mean by that is they are the ones that are actually going to score the tender response, based on a scoring chart that you will have, which will be something like one to 10, or one to 20.

So, they will go through, and they will look at every tender as a tender, and they will assess their tender against the criteria, and then give them a score of one to 10. So that is what Tender Evaluation Team Members do.

Replacing the Evaluation Team Member

Now, the problem arises sometimes that Tender Evaluation Team Members are usually doing their day job, as well as being part of the evaluation team. So, often, they will need to be replaced because they get too busy in their day job.

So, the question that I've often been asked is, "Well, can we replace an evaluation team member?" Now, your tender evaluation plan should allow you some flexibility to do that.

So, yes. You should be able to change the evaluation team member, if they become unavailable because they are too busy or because they're sick, et cetera. So, that shouldn't be an issue. Except, there's always a but, isn't there?

The Issue in Swapping Out an Evaluation Team Member

The issue is this. If the evaluation member who you are swapping out has not started doing any technical scoring, then that's fine.

That's easy. Swap them out with a replacement and then refer to that replacement, or refer to that event occurring in the evaluation report once you've drafted that, just so the delegate knows that the evaluation team member, that was originally nominated in the tender evaluation plan, was subbed out and replaced with someone else. So, just report on all of that, so you've got a clear record of that, which is good.

But then, if the tender evaluation team member who you want to sub out has actually commenced evaluating tenderers, then you've got a problem.

Well, it's not a big problem. It's just a waste of effort problem. What I mean by that is, every team member brings their own bias to scoring. So, you will find, if you do enough evaluations, that some team members will just be consistently giving four, fives and sixes out of 10.

Whereas another team member will be giving seven, eights and nines. That's not so much of an issue in itself because that team member should be acting consistently across all tenders. So, if they're given one tender at seven, eights and nines, then they will give the other tenderer seven, eights and nines, if they think the other tender is of the same quality.

Consistency is Key

But where you swap out a team member, you're losing that consistency between evaluation of tenders.

So, the person who may, let's call them the original team member who's going to sub out, let's say they've marked or evaluated two of the 10 tenders, and they may have marked those two quite harsh because that's just their personality, or that's just what they think.

So, then for the other eight, if you get the new team member to evaluate the other eight, then there could be some bias between the scoring of the other eight, and the original two that were done by the person who's left the evaluation.

So, my advice there would be to actually ensure that if you do sub out a Tender Evaluation Team Member, and if they have done any tender evaluation, then basically put that tender evaluation in the bin. Put it in the bin and get the new Tender Evaluation Team Member that is coming in, to basically just start from scratch.

Then you don't have any issue about bias. You don't have any issue about consistency between tenderers or between tenders because that new incoming Tender Evaluation Team Member will score all tenderers themselves. So, they should act consistently between all of those different tenders.

Conclusion

So, can you sub out a team member? Yes. If you sub them out after the departing team member has commenced the evaluation, then I would suggest putting that departing members evaluation in the bin, and getting the new incoming evaluation team member to start evaluating the tenders from scratch, just to ensure consistency and a lack of bias.

So, there you go. That is what Simon thinks. If you have any questions about any of that, feel free to get in touch, simon@shrewd.com.au, or 1800 SHREW, which is 1800 747 393. I hope that helps.