Spend less to acquire value
that meets your needs

"Will Parsons and Mark Allen provided really useful input to our Best Value Review of Procurement and helped us achieve a much better result with more substantial savings identified through improved procurement practices"

Francis Murphy
Best Value Officer
Southend-on-Sea Borough Council

Dos and Don’ts to Write The Best Specifications

Potential suppliers will intuitively review all aspects of your specification for the risks and potential rewards they perceive will be present if they win your business. They'll use this to help decide:

• How important a customer you are likely to be
• How much time and effort to put into their tender
• The price to charge, and how accurate (read competitive) it is
• The quality to provide

Write your specification by describing what you need in terms of the results/outputs/performance from a supplier. This allows suppliers some freedom to decide how best they can use their expertise to meet your needs. The aim of a specification is to:

• Clearly communicate what you need and not what you want
• Make your expectations known
• Include information that helps suppliers provide accurate costs
• Encourage suppliers to bid in a way that you can evaluate
• Describe how you will measure the successful supplier's performance
• Ask suppliers to use their expertise to suggest valuable alternatives
• Generate competition for your business

Do

• Leave plenty of time
• Set standards or conditions the specification must meet
• Informally consult suppliers to gain their views on specifications
• Determine the desired impact you want to have on potential suppliers
• Have a professional appearance; appearances do matter
• Write in plain English, replace jargon or explain it
• Write from the perspective of potential suppliers
• State what you need clearly, concisely, unambiguously and comprehensively
• Describe what you need in terms of performance and results
• Reduce uncertainty and risk
• Nullify an incumbent supplier's inherent advantage
• Understand how suppliers set prices
• Highlight the rewards on offer
• Make sure bidders have essential supporting information
• Provide the opportunity for bidders to suggest innovative solutions
• Ensure that the specification generates bids that you can evaluate fully and fairly
• Standardise goods and services where possible
• Have independent 'friends' critically challenge it

Don't

• Over specify goods, services and works; you may limit bidders' scope to innovate, which could result in a "Rolls Royce" when a "Mini" would do
• Write specifications which are too long and complicated
• Use jargon
• Blindly use old specifications
• Assume, suppliers will not understand your situation as well as you do
• Include features or needs that discriminate unfairly between potential suppliers
• Include anything that might deter the best suppliers from bidding
• Waste suppliers' time with poor specifications
• Allow incumbent suppliers to have an advantage
• Limit the opportunity for bidders to suggest alternative solutions
• Use supplier brand names
• Contradict other tender documents