How to Address Selection Criteria in Government Tenders

1. The part of the tender that decides the score

Price on a government tender is scored by formula. Everything else is scored by a person reading your written answers against the published criteria — and on a typical civil construction tender, those non-price criteria carry 40 to 70 per cent of the total weighting, as our companion guide on how government tenders are scored sets out in detail. The criteria responses are not the paperwork around your bid. They are the bid.

Most contractors do not write answers. They write about themselves — company history, plant list, values — in whatever order the document template suggests. An evaluation panel cannot give that a high score, because panel members must justify every score against a specific criterion. The contractors who win consistently treat each criterion as a direct question, answer it in the first sentence, and then prove the answer.

One note before we start, because the search terms overlap. If you are looking for help addressing selection criteria for an Australian Public Service job application — the “statement of claims” or pitch that goes with an APS role — this is not that guide; the Australian Public Service Commission publishes its own guidance for applicants.^[1] This guide is the business-to-government version: how a civil construction contractor answers the criteria in a request for tender for works — earthworks, drainage, roads, concrete — where the same vocabulary means something related but commercially different.

The scoring guide covers the evaluator’s side of the table: panels, scoring scales, moderation, weightings. This guide covers the writer’s side — the discrete craft of turning a weighted criterion into a response that earns full marks. If you are new to tendering altogether, start with the complete guide to writing a winning civil construction tender for the foundations, then come back here.

2. Decoding the language: criteria, claims and compliance

The naming shifts between jurisdictions and even between documents in the same tender: evaluation criteria, selection criteria, assessment criteria, qualitative or non-price criteria. Operationally they are the same thing — the published standards the panel must score your offer against. Tasmania’s Treasury guidelines, among the most explicit published frameworks in the country, set out a standard menu of selection criteria for building and construction works: relevant experience, past performance, technical skills, management skills and systems, resources, methodology and price.^[2] Most Australian civil tenders draw their criteria from that same family, whatever heading the buyer puts on them.

Two tiers matter more than the labels. Mandatory criteria are pass/fail: meet them or be set aside before scoring begins, and buyers are required to disclose them as mandatory in the tender documentation. Victoria’s public construction framework, for instance, makes value for money the primary determinant and mandates evaluation criteria covering occupational health and safety management, industrial relations management and consideration of past performance.^[3] Weighted criteria — sometimes called comparative or qualitative criteria — are the ones scored on a scale and multiplied by a percentage. The rest of this guide is mostly about the weighted tier, but section 4 explains why the mandatory tier comes first.

And “statement of claims”? In Australian usage that phrase belongs mostly to public-sector recruitment — the application document in which a candidate makes claims against a role’s selection criteria, typically built with the STAR method the APSC recommends.^[1] Tenders have their own cousins: many RFTs require a statement of compliance against the specification or conditions, set eligibility requirements as conditions for participation, and describe evaluation as an assessment of the claims made in your tender.^[4] Whatever the label on the schedule, when a tender asks you to address, respond to, or make claims against criteria, it is asking for the same artefact: a structured, evidenced answer to each criterion. That artefact is what the rest of this guide builds.

3. Where the criteria live in the tender documents

The criteria rarely sit in one tidy clause. The conditions of tender name the criteria and sometimes their weightings. The returnable schedules or response forms are where you actually answer them. The specification and draft contract define the delivery obligations your answers must stay consistent with. Some buyers formalise the link: Defence, for example, sets out exactly what tenderers must provide in Tender Data Requirements attached to the conditions of tender, so that each information item feeds a specific part of the evaluation.^[5] Read the set as one document, because the panel will.

Treat the schedules as a contract between you and the evaluator about where each answer lives. Use the response forms provided and answer every question in them — government guidance to suppliers says exactly that, and evaluators mark what appears in the field they are looking at.^[6] Where the schedules and the criteria do not map one-to-one — common in council tenders — you build the map yourself before drafting. Section 7 shows how.

Weightings may or may not be published. Victorian agencies, for example, may indicate the relative importance of criteria in the tender documentation but are not required to.^[3] When they are undisclosed, your best proxies are the order and space the schedules allocate to each topic, which criteria carry mandatory flags, and the buyer’s stated project objectives — calibrated against the typical civil construction ranges in the scoring guide. And if you are still decoding which document type you are even holding, our guide to RFTs, RFQs, EOIs and RFPs covers the family tree.

4. Clear the mandatory gates first

Weighted marks only exist for submissions that survive the gates. Typical mandatory items on a civil tender: insurances at the stated limits and currency, the required prequalification category and level, licences and registrations, financial capacity evidence, signed forms and statutory declarations, and — in Victoria — the mandatory occupational health and safety management criteria that apply to construction works.^[3]

A gate failure is not scored down; it removes you. A nine-out-of-ten methodology response is worth nothing attached to an expired insurance certificate. So the working order is fixed: run a compliance pass against every mandatory item first, assemble the certificates and declarations, and only then start writing weighted responses. Missed mandatory items are among the most common — and most avoidable — ways civil contractors lose, as our guide to common tender mistakes details, and a criterion you cannot pass is a signal worth feeding back into the go/no-go decision itself.

5. Deconstructing a criterion into its real questions

A criterion is almost never one question. Take an illustrative example of the kind that appears on council civil tenders: “Demonstrated experience in the delivery of works of a similar nature, scale and complexity, including works in or adjacent to live traffic environments.”

Unpacked, that single sentence is asking at least five things. Demonstrated means evidence, not assertion — the panel wants proof, not confidence. Similar nature means the same discipline of work: drainage experience for a drainage job, not a general civils highlight reel. Scale means comparable contract values and quantities. Complexity means the constraints — staging, services, environmental controls, stakeholders. And live traffic environments is a named sub-requirement that demands its own specific proof: traffic management under permit, on comparable roads, without incident. Five hooks. A response that touches three of them scores like a response that touched three of them.

Where a tender lists sub-criteria explicitly, give each one its own heading using the tender’s exact words, so a time-pressured evaluator can match your answer to their scoring sheet at a glance — if the criterion says “approach to quality assurance”, a section with that exact heading is what they are scanning for.^[7]

The practical habit: before drafting a word, write out the questions hiding inside each criterion as a plain list. That list becomes the skeleton of the response — and later, your final check that nothing was left unanswered.

6. Claim–evidence–result: STAR rebuilt for tenders

The best-known framework for answering selection criteria is STAR — Situation, Task, Action, Result — which the Australian Public Service Commission recommends to job applicants, together with the advice that matters most: back every claim with actual, specific examples of what you have done and what you achieved.^[1] The bones are sound. But a direct transplant into a tender response fails, for three reasons.

• The subject changes. A job application proves what one person did. A tender response proves what an organisation — a named team, a plant fleet, certified systems — can deliver. “I” becomes a supervisor with a name, a ticket list and an availability commitment.
• The tense changes. A recruitment panel is buying a track record. A tender panel is buying a track record and a forward offer for this specific contract — so every result has to land on relevance to their project, not just on a good story about a past one.
• The accountability changes. Tender claims are commercially checkable: referees are called, certificates are verified, and statements in your response can be relied on and carried into the contract you sign. Section 8 covers what that does to your evidence standards.

So the tender-native structure is claim–evidence–result. The claim is a one-sentence direct answer to the criterion, in the opening line of the response — not paragraph four. The evidence is the specific material that makes the claim checkable: named projects with client, value, scope and dates; certified systems; personnel qualifications; production and safety metrics. Government supplier guidance says it plainly: provide specific examples of how you meet the selection criteria rather than simply stating that you do.^[8] The result is what that evidence produced — delivered outcomes — tied forward to the contract on the table: the same methodology, the same supervisor, the same subcontractors proposed here.

In miniature, the three moves read like this: “We have delivered three council stormwater renewals of comparable scope in the past four years [claim], including a $0.8M pipe renewal in a live road environment, completed on program with zero lost-time injuries and a council referee available [evidence] — and the supervisor who ran that project leads the team proposed for this contract [result].” One sentence set; every element checkable.

The self-check comes from the evaluation room. Panel members must record written reasons for the scores they give — the mechanics are in the scoring guide — so read your finished response and ask: could an evaluator lift a sentence from this paragraph and use it, verbatim, as the written justification for a top score? If not, the claim, the evidence or the result is missing.

7. Mirror the language, map every response

Evaluators match answers to criteria by language. So mirror the tender’s terminology in your headings and opening sentences: if the criterion says “stakeholder engagement”, do not rebadge it “client communication” — consistency is what lets the panel connect your response to their scoring sheet.^[7] And work inside the buyer’s structure, not your own: use the response forms provided, answer every question, and leave the formatting, numbering and fonts alone unless the conditions expressly permit changes.^[6]

Then build the criteria–response map: one table, made before drafting starts, that lists every criterion, its weighting, exactly where it gets answered, and the evidence assigned to it. It is the writer’s working copy of the evaluation-table method described in the scoring guide — the same table the panel is effectively using, built from your side first.

Criterion (as published)	Weighting	Answered in	Evidence assigned
Relevant experience	20%	Schedule C · 2 pages	Three named comparable projects with values, dates and referees
Construction methodology	25%	Schedule D · 6 pages	Site-specific sequence, program excerpt, ITP hold points
Key personnel	10%	Schedule E · 1-page CVs	Supervisor and PM CVs, tickets, availability statement
WHS management	15%	Schedule F	Project-specific SWMS extract, certified system evidence
Local content and jobs	10%	LIDP + Schedule G	ICN-acknowledged LIDP, named local suppliers and quantified commitments

An illustrative criteria–response map for a council road reconstruction tender. Schedules, weightings and limits are invented for the example — yours come from the actual conditions of tender.

The map does three jobs at once. It exposes gaps before they cost you — a criterion with no evidence assigned is a problem you want to find in week one, not the night before close. It allocates drafting effort in proportion to the weightings, so the 25 per cent criterion gets the depth and the 5 per cent criterion gets a tight page. And it keeps a multi-author response consistent, because everyone can see where each answer belongs. The heavyweight rows each have their own dedicated guides: the methodology statement, the construction program, and the WHS management plan and SWMS.

8. The evidence hierarchy: what counts as proof

Not all evidence weighs the same. At the top sits third-party verified material: certifications and certified management systems, prequalification categories and levels, an ICN-acknowledged plan, industry-body certification, awards — claims about you made by someone other than you. Next comes the verifiable project fact: a named client, contract value, scope, dates and a referee — and the referee only counts if they have given permission and been briefed on the tender so their comments land on the job specification.^[8] Third, internal metrics: plant lists, production rates, safety frequency rates, on-time completion records — genuinely useful, but weaker without corroboration. Last, and worth nothing on its own, assertion. The submission checklists government publishes for suppliers make the standard explicit: back responses with evidence, and show how you meet the requirements rather than telling the buyer that you do.^[9]

Evidence discipline is also accuracy discipline. Every claim in a criteria response should survive a phone call — because on a real evaluation, some of them will get one. Over-claiming is a scoring risk when the referee tells a smaller story than your response did, and a legal one beyond that: statements made in a tender can be relied on by the buyer and incorporated into the final contract, and accuracy obligations under Australian Consumer Law apply to tender conduct.^[10] Claim what you can prove; prove what you claim.

The efficient way to run this over multiple tenders is to build the evidence base once and deploy it per criterion: a maintained capability statement (there is a complete worked example on the site) and a structured tender content library. But the library is a warehouse, not an answer. Every deployment gets re-mapped to this tender’s criteria and this project’s constraints — recycled generic content is what mid-pack scores are made of.

9. Weak vs strong: three responses rewritten

Three common criterion types, each with a weak response and a rebuilt one. Every company, project, figure and commitment below is invented for teaching purposes — these are illustrations of structure, not client results or real submissions.

Relevant experience

The criterion: “Demonstrated experience delivering works of a similar nature, scale and complexity.”

Weak: “XYZ Civil has extensive experience in drainage and stormwater projects across the region and prides itself on delivering quality outcomes for its clients.”

Strong: “XYZ Civil has delivered three council stormwater renewals of directly comparable nature, scale and complexity in the past four years. The closest match is the Riverside Road drainage renewal for Example Shire Council ($840K, 2024): 640 metres of RCP up to 900 mm, staged under traffic on a collector road, completed to program with zero lost-time injuries; the council’s project engineer is a briefed referee. The other two projects, with values, scopes and referees, are tabled below. The supervisor who ran all three leads the crew proposed for this contract.”

The weak version makes one unverifiable claim. The strong version answers the criterion in its own words — nature, scale, complexity — and hands the evaluator a checkable fact for each, plus the forward tie to this job.

Key personnel

The criterion: “Qualifications and experience of key personnel proposed for the works.”

Weak: “Our team is highly experienced and fully qualified, and we pride ourselves on a strong safety culture across all our sites.”

Strong: “Site supervisor J. Example: 14 years in civil drainage and roadworks, Certificate IV in Civil Construction, current traffic management and confined space tickets, supervisor on the three referenced projects. Project manager A. Sample: 9 years managing council contracts to $2M, responsible for program, ITPs and client reporting. Both are committed to this contract for its full duration, with no concurrent allocations across the proposed delivery window; one-page CVs are at Schedule E.”

Named people, specific qualifications, relevant history, and the one thing panels quietly worry about most — availability — answered before it is asked.

Local content and jobs

The criterion (Victorian framing): “Industry development and job outcomes commitments under Local Jobs First.” On projects that meet the thresholds, these carry a mandatory 10 per cent evaluation weighting for industry development and a further 10 per cent for job outcomes, assessed with the help of an ICN review of each bidder’s Local Industry Development Plan.^[11]

Weak: “We are a proud local business and support local jobs and suppliers wherever possible.”

Strong: “Our ICN-acknowledged LIDP, attached, commits to 92 per cent local content by value, sourced through named Victorian suppliers for pipe supply, concrete and traffic management; four full-time-equivalent Victorian positions across the delivery period, including one second-year civil apprentice; and quarterly reporting against each commitment.”

Quantified, named, and deliberately conservative — the ICN assessment considers the achievability of local content commitments, so a credible 92 beats a hollow 100.^[11] The wider policy landscape, including the NSW and Queensland equivalents, is covered in our guide to social and Indigenous procurement policies.

10. Limits, forms, and the mistakes that sink responses

Word and page limits are compliance signals, not suggestions. Stick to them, use the response forms provided, complete every field, and leave fonts, sizing and numbering exactly as issued unless the conditions expressly permit changes.^[6] When a response runs long, cut context, not evidence — the throat-clearing about your company history goes; the named project with the referee stays. Keep each answer self-contained in the field where it is asked: an evaluator scoring Schedule C should never be sent hunting to Section 4 for the substance. And attach only what is invited — buyers themselves warn that unnecessary information makes tenders harder to evaluate and slows the assessment down.^[5]

Then there are the failure patterns specific to criteria responses — the ones that show up again and again in losing civil submissions:

• Answering the question you wish they had asked. Pivoting a weak criterion toward your strengths reads as evasion, and it scores as one — the evaluator can only award marks against the criterion in front of them.
• The capability-statement dump. Pages about the company with nothing mapped to the criterion’s actual hooks. Impressive to you; unscorable to the panel.
• Commitment language without systems. “We are committed to safety” is assertion. A certified system, a project-specific SWMS and your frequency rates are evidence.
• Recycled answers left un-re-mapped. The fastest tell is another client’s name or the wrong project type sitting in paragraph two — and evaluators see it constantly.
• Effort inverted against the weightings. Two polished pages on a 5 per cent criterion and a single rushed paragraph on the 25 per cent one.
• Schedule fields answered “refer to attachment”. The evaluator scores what is in the field they are marking. Put the answer there; let the attachment be the supporting detail.
• Claims with no verifiable anchor. No client, no value, no date, no referee — nothing the panel could write down as the justification for a top score.

These sit inside the broader set of losing patterns in our guide to common tender mistakes — but the seven above are the criterion-response failures specifically, and every one of them is avoidable with the process in this guide: deconstruct the criterion, answer it in the first sentence, evidence the answer, map every response to its schedule, and respect the limits. It is the same discipline the scoring guide describes from the other side of the table — you are simply building, in advance, the exact material a panel needs to justify giving you full marks.

Addressing criteria is the centre of TenderBuilt’s tender writing work for civil construction SMEs — deconstructing the criteria, building the evidence, and writing the answers, every week, for contractors bidding government and council work across Australia. If you would rather your next set of criteria responses were written by someone who does exactly this for a living, the contact details below are the place to start.

This guide is general information for Australian civil construction businesses and is not legal or procurement advice. Criteria wording, response formats and page limits differ between agencies and between tenders, and a response structure that scores well in one may not comply in another. Always work from the returnable schedules and conditions of tendering for the specific opportunity.

1. Australian Public Service Commission, Applying for an APS job: cracking the code — apsc.gov.au. ↩ ↩ ↩
2. Department of Treasury and Finance (Tas), Guidelines on Tender Evaluation using Weighted Criteria for Building Works and Services — purchasing.tas.gov.au. ↩
3. Buying for Victoria, Evaluation criteria (Construction Direction and Instruction 3.7) and Evaluation criteria (Construction Guidance 3.7) — buyingfor.vic.gov.au. ↩ ↩ ↩
4. Grains Research and Development Corporation, Request for Tender (RFT) Terms and Conditions — grdc.com.au, an example of statement-of-compliance and conditions-for-participation requirements in a Commonwealth-entity RFT. ↩
5. Department of Defence, Tender Evaluation Best Practice Guide — defence.gov.au. ↩ ↩
6. Business Queensland, Main steps in the tender process — business.qld.gov.au. ↩ ↩ ↩
7. GovBid, Understanding Government Tender Evaluation Criteria — govbid.com.au. ↩ ↩
8. Business Queensland, Tips for writing a successful tender response — business.qld.gov.au. ↩ ↩
9. Business Queensland, Checking and submitting a tender bid — business.qld.gov.au. ↩
10. Sprintlaw, Request for Tender (RFT) in Australia — sprintlaw.com.au, on accuracy of claims in tender responses and the risk of statements being relied on or incorporated into the final agreement. ↩
11. Local Jobs First (Victoria), Supplier Guidelines — localjobsfirst.vic.gov.au. ↩ ↩