A sustainable tender with unverifiable evidence

Start with what cannot be changed. The award criteria were published and fixed before bids opened. The agency cannot now invent new scored criteria for recycled content or take-back, however desirable. Introducing them after opening would be a procurement irregularity and would very likely trigger a challenge from Bid A. The first task is therefore to establish what the published quality criteria actually allow, and to score strictly within them.

Then correct the price comparison. A straight 7% premium on purchase price is not a cost comparison. Monitors consume electricity for years; over a typical service life, use-phase energy can approach or exceed the purchase price, and end-of-life disposal carries cost. Build a whole-life cost model covering purchase, energy over the stated life, consumables, disposal and the administrative cost of the current no-take-back route. The EUR 600,000 gap may shrink, disappear, or grow - but the agency does not currently know which.

Test Bid B's evidence as a matter of responsiveness, not score. A self-declared carbon footprint is not verified data. The agency can ask whether the claim is capable of verification, and if it is not, treat it as unsubstantiated for the purposes of any criterion that depends on it.

Check the pass/fail threshold. If the tender included mandatory environmental requirements, Bid A's four 'not disclosed' answers may be non-compliant rather than merely weak.

Document the reasoning at each step - this is a public award and the audit trail is part of the deliverable.

Convert claims into obligations. A claim made in a bid is marketing until it appears in the contract with a consequence attached. The contract should carry:

• Take-back as a defined obligation, with reporting on weights collected, reuse versus recycling split, and the destination facility.
• Data destruction evidence for any device returning through the scheme, given the agency's information obligations.
• Flow-down of these obligations to the refurbishment subcontractor, with the prime contractor remaining accountable.
• Audit rights over the subcontractor, and a right to require a recognised certification or an independent audit at defined intervals.
• Remedies for failed or unverifiable claims - price adjustment, retention, or termination for persistent non-performance.

Set an evidence standard, not just a request for evidence. Where the agency relies on a carbon footprint figure, specify what will be accepted: a product-level declaration produced to a published methodology and independently verified, with the baseline and scope stated. Accepting a spreadsheet today makes every future claim unpoliceable.

Watch the lifecycle of the guarantee. Take-back obligations bind at end of life, typically five to seven years after award, when the original account team has moved on. A performance bond or retained percentage held for the contract duration is the mechanism that keeps the obligation alive.

Audit the subcontractor before, not after. The agency has never audited the refurbishment partner. Either do so now, or make the first audit a contractual milestone with a defined remedy.

Do not treat unverified evidence as scored evidence. The temptation is to award partial credit because the bid looks better on sustainability. That would award marks on an assertion, and it would be indefensible if challenged - either by Bid A, or later by an auditor asking what the score was based on.

Use the tools the rules actually provide:

• If clarification of an ambiguity (rather than a change to the bid) is permitted, ask Bid B for the method behind the declaration. That tells you whether a verification route exists and how long it would take.
• If verification is possible within the tender's stated timetable, make it a condition precedent to award, with a short cure period.
• If it is not, score the criterion on the evidence that exists, and record why.

Consider a conditional award. Award to Bid B with the carbon claim moved into the contract as a committed figure backed by a remedy, rather than as a scored claim. That preserves the environmental outcome without scoring an unverified number. The risk is that the commitment proves undeliverable; mitigate with a price mechanism rather than a promise.

Fix the cause for the next cycle. Add mandatory minimum environmental requirements as pass/fail, specify the evidence standard in the tender documents, and build whole-life costing into the price evaluation. The current problem is a specification gap, and it will recur on every tender until the documents change.

Record the decision and the reason. Public procurement decisions are reviewed after the fact; the note explaining why an unverified claim was not scored is the agency's protection.