What price is actually worth on the grid

"Just come in cheaper" is the most common piece of tender advice, and the usual rebuttal is that quality wins on the grid. We read the grids: 7,154 tenders whose award criteria publish a price weight. The rebuttal does not survive them.

Price is heavier than the advice assumes

The median tender puts 41% of its total score on price. The middle half of the market sits between 40% and 60%, so half of all tenders weight price at 40 points or more before a line of methodology is read. In 21.7% of them price takes 70% or more of the grid. In 11.1% it takes the whole thing: an award decided on the number alone, with no quality criterion carrying any weight at all.

Only 12% of tenders weight price below 30%. Those are the ones the folklore is describing.

Where quality has room

In the 4,274 tenders where both price and a quality-family criterion carry published weights, quality outweighs price 51.3% of the time. Close to a coin flip, and knowable per tender in advance, because the split is printed in the document you already downloaded.

Quality is scored almost as often as price, 11,221 criteria against 11,439, but at a median weight of 20% against price's 40%. Appearing on the grid and deciding the outcome are different things.

The question is never whether price matters. It is what fraction of the score it takes here, which the tender has already told you.

1. Read the price weight before deciding to bid, not after the pricing meeting.
2. Treat a grid above 70% price as a commodity purchase and price it that way, or skip it.
3. Where price sits under 30%, the proposal is the product and discounting buys almost nothing.

None of this is an argument for being expensive. It is an argument for knowing which of the two markets you are in, from a number that is printed in the document.