An evaluator opens the personnel section of a civil tender and finds four CVs. Each opens with a career objective. Each lists employment history in reverse chronological order with dates and job titles. One mentions a Certificate III obtained in 2004. None of them says what the person actually built, on what kind of job, or what they will do on this one.
These are recruitment CVs. They were written to get someone a job, and they have been dropped into a document written to win a contract. The two answer completely different questions, and the panel has no way to score the first against the criterion in front of them.
The wrong document, answering the wrong question
A recruitment CV answers: should we employ this person? It emphasises career progression, breadth, aspiration and the individual’s own development.
A tender CV answers something narrower and more specific: can this person deliver this project, and what is the evidence? Career progression is irrelevant. Aspiration is irrelevant. What matters is demonstrated delivery of comparable work, in the role being nominated, on projects of comparable scale and complexity.
That difference should reshape the whole document. Every line that does not help an evaluator answer the tender’s question is taking space from a line that would.
What is actually being scored
Personnel criteria are usually worded as capability, capacity and experience of the proposed project team. Behind that wording, evaluators are testing four things — and they are not weighted equally.
| What they test | What convinces them | What does not |
|---|---|---|
| Relevant experience | Named projects of comparable type, scale and complexity, with the person’s actual role stated | Years in the industry. A long career on different work is not relevant experience |
| Role fit | The person has held this role before, not an adjacent one | A leading hand nominated as project manager with no PM history |
| Capacity | Stated allocation to this project, and honesty about other commitments | Silence. Evaluators assume the worst about unstated availability |
| Qualifications and currency | The tickets the role requires, current, listed with expiry where relevant | A long list of expired or irrelevant certificates |
One further point that raises the stakes on this section: personnel claims are among the few things in a bid an evaluator can verify independently. They can call a referee. They may know the person. On agency work, key personnel named in a tender often reappear in the prequalification record — our guides to TfNSW prequalification and civil contractor prequalification cover how key personnel feed those assessments. Overstating here is more visible than overstating anywhere else in the document.
Who to nominate
Only nominate roles the tender asks for, plus any role the work genuinely requires. Padding the team with people who will never attend site is transparent and it dilutes the strong entries.
| Role | What the evaluator wants to see |
|---|---|
| Project manager / contract manager | Delivery of comparable contracts end to end, including the commercial side — claims, programme, client interface |
| Site supervisor / foreman | The person actually running the work. Often the most heavily weighted entry on a civil job, and the one most often under-written |
| Project engineer | Technical delivery, quality records, ITPs and conformance — see quality management plans and ITPs |
| WHS representative | Qualification, and the practical safety systems they run — see WHS management plans and SWMS |
| Environmental representative | Where a CEMP is required — see CEMP for civil tenders |
| Surveyor, quality manager, traffic controller | Where the tender specifically requires them, or where the work makes them material |
Two decisions worth making deliberately:
Do not nominate the owner for every role. On a small civil business the owner genuinely does several jobs, but a chart showing one name against project manager, WHS, quality and environmental tells an evaluator the business has no depth and no redundancy. See §08.
Nominate the people who will actually do it. Naming your most impressive employee for a job they will never attend is both a scoring risk and, given the commitment discussed in §11, a contractual one.
The project CV: structure
A tender CV should be one page, occasionally two for a project manager on a large bid, and it should run in this order.
- Name, and the role on this project. “Daniel Nguyen — Site Supervisor (nominated)”. The role on this job, first, because that is what the evaluator is scoring.
- Time with the business, and total relevant experience. Two numbers, one line. “14 years civil construction · 6 years with [company]”.
- Allocation to this project. “Full time on site for the duration” or “0.4 FTE, on site three days per week”. State it. See §12.
- A three-line relevance summary. What this person does, on what kind of work, at what scale — written for this tender specifically.
- Comparable project experience. The core of the document. Three to five projects, most relevant first, not most recent first.
- Qualifications and tickets. Current, relevant, with expiry dates where they matter.
- Nothing else. No career objective, no personal interests, no referees (they belong in the referees section), no photograph unless requested.
The project CV: what to write
The project entries are where the marks are. Each one should carry five pieces of information, and most CVs carry two.
| Element | Weak | Strong |
|---|---|---|
| Project and client | “Various council projects” | “Kerb and channel renewal, Wattle Street — [Council]” |
| Value and duration | Omitted | “$1.4M · 22 weeks · completed March 2025” |
| Their role | “Involved in delivery” | “Site Supervisor — responsible for daily programming, crew of 9, subcontractor coordination and ITP sign-off” |
| Technical relevance to this bid | Omitted | “Works delivered under live traffic with staged lane closures, directly comparable to the traffic staging required here” |
| Outcome | Omitted | “Completed within the contract period with no lost-time injuries and no nonconformances at handover” |
The fourth row is the one that separates a good personnel section from an average one. Do not leave the evaluator to work out why a project is relevant — say it. One clause per project, drawing the line between what the person has done and what this job requires, is the single highest-value habit in this section.
On outcomes, a caution consistent with how the rest of this library approaches evidence: state what you can substantiate. “Completed within the contract period” is verifiable. “Delivered $2M under budget” invites a question you may not want asked, and unverifiable performance claims are exactly the kind of thing that damages credibility across a whole submission — the same discipline that applies to capability statements.
Length, format and the appendix trap
Three mechanical points that decide whether the section is read.
- One page each, formatted identically. Four CVs in four different templates, with different fonts and different field orders, forces the evaluator to re-learn the layout each time. A single consistent template makes comparison effortless and signals an organised business.
- Check whether CVs count toward a page limit. Many tenders exclude appendices; many do not. Assuming wrongly either wastes your response allowance or creates a compliance problem — see non-conforming tenders.
- Put them where the tender says. If a returnable schedule specifies a CV format, use it exactly, even if yours is better. A superior document in the wrong format is a compliance risk for no benefit.
The appendix trap deserves its own note. Contractors routinely push CVs into an appendix to save word count and then write nothing about the team in the response itself. The evaluator scores the response, and the appendix supports it. If the response body says nothing about your people, the CVs are supporting an argument nobody made. Make the argument in the response; evidence it in the appendix.
The organisation chart
An org chart is not decoration. It answers questions the CVs cannot: who reports to whom, where the decisions are made, and how the project connects to the rest of the business.
A good project org chart shows:
- The project team, by name and role — matching the CVs exactly. Mismatches between chart and CVs are noticed.
- The reporting lines within the project, and the line back into the business — usually to a director or contracts manager.
- The interface with the principal. Who talks to the superintendent, and who is authorised to receive directions. This connects directly to the delegation question in our guide to contract administration for civil SMEs, and showing it signals you administer contracts properly.
- Where subcontractors sit, and who manages them.
- Support functions that are not full time on site — safety, quality, estimating, administration — shown as supporting rather than embedded.
- Allocation, marked simply. Full time, part time, or as-required against each box.
Keep it to one page and make it legible at A4. An org chart that has to be zoomed is not doing its job.
The small-business problem: one person, four roles
The genuine difficulty for a civil SME: on a fifteen-person business, the same person really is the project manager, the WHS representative and the person who signs the ITPs. Drawing that honestly produces a chart with one name in four boxes, which reads as a single point of failure.
Three approaches that work, and one that does not.
| Approach | How it works |
|---|---|
| Show the role, name the backup | Every critical box carries a primary and a nominated alternate. Even where the alternate is a director who steps in, it demonstrates the business has thought about continuity |
| Use external support honestly | An external WHS consultant, an environmental adviser or a surveying firm named in the chart is depth, not weakness — provided the arrangement is real and you can evidence it |
| Scale the structure to the job | A $400K job does not need a five-layer chart. Matching the structure to the contract’s actual complexity reads as competence; over-structuring reads as fiction |
| Invent a team ✗ | Naming people who do not exist, or who will not be available, is the one approach that fails badly. It is verifiable, and it becomes a contractual problem after award |
The honest framing is usually the persuasive one: a small team where the decision-maker is on site every day is a genuine advantage over a large contractor whose project manager visits fortnightly. Say that. Evaluators scoring a $600,000 council job are not looking for a Tier 1 structure — they are looking for someone who will answer the phone and be there when the trench is open.
Showing depth without inventing it
Evaluators worry about what happens when your key person is unavailable. Answering that question before it is asked is worth marks.
- Name a nominated alternate for each critical role, with a one-line note of their relevant experience.
- Show the wider team briefly. A short line — “supported by a permanent workforce of 18 including 4 plant operators, 2 pipelayers and 3 apprentices” — establishes that the nominated individuals sit inside a real business.
- Mention retention. Average tenure, or the fact that your supervisor has been with you nine years, addresses continuity risk directly.
- Reference the apprentices. On projects carrying skills targets this is doubly useful — see local content, skills and training requirements.
- Explain the escalation path. Who covers a two-week absence, and who the principal contacts if the supervisor cannot be reached.
Where subcontractors and consultants sit
Most civil SMEs subcontract something — traffic management, surveying, asphalt, line marking, testing. How that appears in the personnel section matters.
- Name them where you can. A named subcontractor with a stated relationship history is stronger than “to be appointed”, which reads as an unresolved risk.
- Show them on the chart, clearly marked as subcontractors, reporting to whoever manages them.
- Do not include their staff CVs unless asked. It bloats the section and shifts attention away from your own people.
- Check whether the tender restricts subcontracting or requires approval of subcontractors. Some contracts do, and naming an unapproved subcontractor creates a problem.
- Be careful about implying capability you do not hold. A subcontractor’s accreditation is theirs, not yours, and evaluators read that distinction closely.
Where you are the one being named in someone else’s bid, the same section is being written about you — our guide to subcontracting to Tier 1 civil contractors covers what head contractors are looking for.
The commitment you are making
This is the part contractors most often do not realise they have agreed to.
Key personnel named in a tender frequently become a contractual commitment. Many Australian construction contracts include a key personnel clause requiring the contractor to engage the named individuals in the nominated roles, and requiring the principal’s approval before they are replaced — sometimes with a requirement that any replacement be of equal or better experience.
The practical consequences:
- Nominating your best person to win the job, then putting someone else on it, can be a breach. At minimum it is a conversation with the superintendent you would rather not have in week one.
- Check the clause before you nominate, and put it on the one-page contract summary — see contract administration for civil SMEs.
- If a named person leaves the business, tell the principal early and propose a replacement with evidence, rather than substituting quietly and hoping.
- On multi-year panels, key personnel commitments are harder to hold. Consider nominating roles with named incumbents rather than making an unqualified personal commitment for five years — see winning work off panels and standing offers.
Availability, and the question evaluators ask quietly
Every evaluator scoring a small contractor’s personnel section is thinking the same thing: this person is named on the last three tenders this company submitted — what happens if they win all of them?
Most bids never address it. Addressing it directly is unusual enough to be worth marks.
- State current commitments honestly. “Currently supervising [project], due for completion November 2026, before this contract’s programmed start.”
- State the allocation. Full time, or a specific split, per role.
- Explain what happens if workload increases. Your recruitment position, your labour hire arrangements, or the second supervisor you would deploy.
- Match it to the programme. If the programme shows a peak requiring two crews, the personnel section should show two crews.
The consistency point is worth emphasising. Evaluators cross-read sections, and a personnel section showing one supervisor against a construction programme requiring three simultaneous work fronts is an internal contradiction that damages both.
Keeping CVs current without rewriting them every bid
The personnel section is the most reusable content in a tender, and the most commonly out of date. Treat it as a maintained library rather than a per-bid task — the approach set out in our guide to building a tender content library.
- Hold a master CV per person containing every project they have delivered — longer than you would ever submit.
- Cut down per bid. Select the three to five most relevant projects and write the relevance clause for this tender. That is a fifteen-minute task, not a rewrite.
- Update at project completion, not at tender time. Add the project to the master CV when the job finishes and the details are accurate — this pairs with the completion discipline in practical completion and the final claim.
- Track ticket expiry dates centrally. An expired ticket in a submitted CV is a credibility problem and occasionally a compliance one.
- Review the org chart quarterly, not per bid.
Checklist
- Does every CV state the role on this project, at the top?
- Are projects ordered by relevance rather than recency?
- Does each project entry carry client, value, duration, the person’s role and a relevance clause?
- Is the allocation to this project stated for every nominated person?
- Are all CVs in one consistent template, one page each?
- Does the org chart name match the CV names exactly?
- Does the chart show the interface with the superintendent, and who can receive directions?
- Is there a nominated alternate for each critical role?
- Are current commitments disclosed, and consistent with the programme?
- Have you read the key personnel clause in the contract before nominating?
- Are all tickets current, with expiry dates where relevant?
- Do CVs count toward the page limit?
The short version
- A recruitment CV answers “should we employ this person”. A tender CV answers “can this person deliver this project”. Rewrite accordingly.
- Order projects by relevance, not by date, and write one clause per project drawing the line to this job.
- State allocation and current commitments. Silence is read as the worst case.
- The org chart must show the principal interface and who can receive directions — that alone signals you administer contracts properly.
- For a small business, honest depth beats an invented hierarchy. Name alternates and real external support.
- Named key personnel are usually a contractual commitment. Read the clause before you nominate.
Sources and further reading
This guide is general information for Australian civil construction businesses and is not legal advice. Key personnel obligations, replacement approval requirements and returnable formats are set by the individual tender and contract. All examples are illustrative and do not describe real individuals or projects. Always work from the tender documents and the executed contract.
- Transport for NSW — National Prequalification System for Civil (Road and Bridge) Construction Guidelines, and Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads — TIPDS Volume 3: Prequalification System: prequalification classification based on the contractor’s technical and managerial expertise, financial capacity and previous performance, with key personnel and their experience forming part of the technical and managerial assessment. Sourced in full in our guides to TfNSW prequalification and TMR prequalification in Queensland.
- Victorian Department of Transport and Planning — Roads Pre-qualification Register: registration requiring companies to demonstrate suitable expertise, management systems, insurances and financial capacity, with nominated personnel and their demonstrated competency forming part of the expertise assessment. Sourced in full in our guide to VicRoads prequalification and the MRPV panels.