Establishing the system for awarding points to the offers
Analysing and awarding points to the offers will result in an effective comparison.
This requires that entities:
- establish the main weighting factors they intend to use to award the contract;
- attach a relative importance to each criterion in the specifications as a basis for awarding points to the offers;
- clearly define how points will be awarded to the technical and financial criteria.
A. Weighting of the main criteria
In order to identify the tenderer offering the best quality/price ratio, the entity should use the following formula to calculate the overall scores for the competing offers:
Total score = technical (quality) score + financial (price) score
The entity should, therefore, in line with its catering policy, fix the weighting to apply to the two main sets of criteria, technical (quality) criteria, on the one hand, and financial (price) criteria on the other.
With this in mind, Table 13 shows various possible scenarios, depending on the relative importance attached to the technical and financial criteria:
Note: for ease of analysis, it is recommended that a total of 100 points be used as the basis for awarding points to the criteria.
Table 13 : Main weighting factors determining award of points to offers - examples
| Example of weighting given to technical criteria | Example of weighting given to financial criteria | Level of priority given to technical (quality) and financial (price) criteria |
| 20 | 80 | Price clearly takes precedence, with quality being secondary. |
| 40 | 60 | Price is more important than quality but the latter remains important. |
| 50 | 50 | Quality and price are equally important. |
| 60 | 40 | Quality is more important than price, which nevertheless remains an important factor. |
| 80 | 20 | Quality clearly takes precedence, with price being secondary. |
B. Allocating points to the technical and financial criteria
Once the main weighting factors have been fixed, the entity will allocate points to the criteria according to their relative importance. The total number of points allocated to each of the two sets of criteria, technical and financial, should equal those allocated to them according to the weighting exercise here.
Once each criterion has a number of points allocated to it from the total available, the entity will then be able give a score to each of the offers corresponding to how well the tenderer has met the criterion. This will enable the entity to compare the offers criterion by criterion.
- Table 14 : Example of points allocated to the technical criteria
- Table 15 : Example of points allocated to financial criteria
C. Establishing the procedure for awarding points to the offers
1. Procedure for awarding points to the technical criteria
This involves applying a uniform system for awarding points to each criterion that makes it possible to systematically compare tenderers’ offers.
Thus, for each criterion, three assessments are proposed:
“Does not conform”, “Partly conforms” and “Conforms”.
It is up to the entity concerned to allocate a percentage score to each of these assessments.
For example:
- Does not conform: the score is 0 % of the points allocated to the criteria in question.
- Partly conforms: this degree of conformity corresponds to a score of 50% of the allocated points.
- Conforms: this degree of conformity corresponds to a score of 100% of the allocated points.
Table 16: Definitions of levels of conformity for awarding points to technical offers
| Assessment | Principles governing the various levels of conformity |
| Does not conform: 0% | This assessment is used when the information provided by the tenderer does not meet the entity’s stated requirements |
| Partly conforms: 50% | In this case, the tenderer’s response does not fully meet the entity’s requirements |
| Conforms: 100% | The information provided responds fully to the requirements stated in the tender documents |
2.Procedures for awarding points to financial offers
The system recommended in this guide consists of awarding the maximum number of financial criteria related points to the tenderer presenting the lowest financial offer.
All other offers will be measured against this lowest cost offer. To do this, points are deducted in line with the percentage by which each offer exceeds the lowest offer.
In the working hypothesis, 40 points were awarded to financial criteria. In the following example, a price increase of 10% should lead to a points reduction of 10% out of the total of 40 and so on.
Table 17: Example of points awarded to financial offers
| Tenderer | Price offer | % difference compared with lowest offer | Points awarded to financial offer |
| A | 1 000 000 € | - | 40 |
| B | 1 200 000 € | 20% | 32 |
| C | 1 300 000 € | 30% | 28 |
