Technical evaluation

Technical evaluation is where owner engineers, discipline leads, and technical evaluators turn contractor proposals into a reviewed, weighted, defensible score. TruBuild accelerates criteria setup, proposal analysis, scoring drafts, and clarification impact review, while keeping the technical team responsible for the final judgment. The workflow is package-based. Each evaluation round is preserved, so the team can show exactly how scores moved after post-tender clarifications (PTCs). For how technical rounds sit alongside commercial rounds and the query register, see Rounds and clarifications.

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Who this is for

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What you need

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What you get

• A weighted criteria structure, organized by scope with individual breakdowns
• AI-drafted scores (0 to 100, to one decimal place) per contractor and criterion, each backed by evidence with document and page references
• A review workflow where evaluators adjust scores and comments, then approve each one to lock it in
• A contractor leaderboard ranked by total weighted score, with score deltas against the previous round
• An Excel results workbook and a Word report for committee review

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Evaluation status at a glance

Each evaluation moves through four statuses: While an evaluation is Analyzing, you see a progress view with the current stage and a progress track. If a run fails, TruBuild shows the error and a Retry Analysis button. Any previous results are preserved.

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Before TruBuild

A typical technical evaluation on a mid-sized tender (5 bidders, ~25 criteria) takes 2 to 3 weeks of elapsed time and consumes 60 to 100 evaluator-hours. Pain points:

• Rubric inconsistency: every evaluator builds their own style
• No way to verify each proposal was checked against every criterion
• Aggregation errors from copy-paste transcription
• No justification trail: “why did Vendor B get 70 on project management?”

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With TruBuild

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Step-by-step: the initial submission round

The first round of every technical evaluation is labelled Initial Submission. It sets the criteria and the baseline scores that later rounds compare against.

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1. Upload RFP documents

Upload the tender documents into the Request For Proposals (RFP) zone. TruBuild uses them to generate criteria and as scoring context during analysis.

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2. Define evaluation criteria

In the Define Evaluation Criteria step, choose one of three methods: Criteria are organized on two levels: The description is the scoring guidance the analysis follows, so make it specific. Weights support up to two decimal places and must total exactly 100% across all breakdowns. The UI validates the total and confirms “Total weight is valid” before you can continue.

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3. Review the criteria

The Criteria review step shows the full structure before analysis. This is the moment to freeze the evaluation basis: confirm scopes, breakdowns, descriptions, weights, and the contractor list. Mid-evaluation weighting changes are a leading source of post-award disputes, so get sign-off from the technical lead here.

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4. Upload contractor proposals

Upload each contractor’s technical submission into their Vendor files slot. If a contractor submitted multiple volumes (technical, QA, execution plan), upload them all under that contractor. OCR scanned-only documents before uploading; native files produce better evidence.

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5. Run the analysis

Start the analysis. The evaluation moves to Analyzing and shows live progress by stage. For each contractor and criterion, TruBuild:

1. Reads the relevant sections of the contractor’s submission
2. Compares the content against the criterion description
3. Drafts a score on the 0 to 100 scale
4. Attaches evidence with file references, including page numbers where available

When the run completes, the evaluation moves to Ready.

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6. Review and approve scores

Results appear as a contractor-by-criterion matrix. For each cell, the evaluator sees the drafted score and its evidence. Evidence is marked as automatically extracted or manually added, and you can add your own. Adjust the score where your judgment differs, then approve it to lock it in. Treat the AI score as a draft: the evaluator’s approval is the final word. When the team has finished, mark the evaluation as reviewed to move it to Review Complete.

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7. Read the leaderboard

The contractor leaderboard sits at the top of the results view. It ranks contractors by total weighted score and shows each contractor’s position. Scope-level totals show where each contractor is strong or weak, which is often more useful to a committee than the single headline number.

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Running a PTC round

After the initial round, raise post-tender clarifications for material gaps, then create a PTC round to assess the responses. PTC rounds are labelled Round 1, Round 2, and so on, and organization admins can standardize custom round labels in Settings. Each round inherits the criteria from the previous round, so the scoring basis stays consistent. A PTC round has three setup steps: Round setup, Response files, and Affected criteria.

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Mapping PTC items to criteria

When you upload issued PTCs, TruBuild parses each item, records the type of issue it raises (an information gap in the submission or an incomplete response), and maps it to a criterion with a confidence badge: High confidence, Medium confidence, or Low confidence. Check low-confidence mappings manually; the setup screen warns you with “X uploaded PTC item(s) were mapped with low confidence and should be checked”. Rows that could not be mapped at all appear as unmatched, with the counter “X uploaded rows still need to be reviewed”. You must assign a criterion to every unmatched row, and clear both warnings, before the analysis can start.

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Rerun or carry forward

For each contractor and criterion, decide what the clarification response means for the score: Each decision carries a rationale, so the round record shows why unaffected scores were preserved. TruBuild suggests decisions with a default rationale such as “The new response appears to change this criterion”, and you can override any decision or edit the rationale text. Bulk actions speed up large matrices: Select all for contractor, Select all for criterion, or Select all.

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Comparing rounds

After a PTC round completes, each rerun criterion shows a delta badge next to its score: a green up-arrow for an improvement (for example “+2.5”), a red down-arrow for a decrease (for example “-1.2”), and a gray minus showing “0.0” for no change. The leaderboard shows total-score deltas too, so you can see at a glance which contractor gained or lost ground after clarifications.

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Exporting results

Click Export in the results view and choose an output: The Excel workbook contains:

• Overview sheet: contractor rankings, total scores per round, and score deltas across rounds
• Per-contractor sheets: criterion scores by round, evidence, comments, and per-criterion deltas
• Summary data: scope totals, weights, and cross-round comparison

The Word report includes an executive summary, the criteria overview, contractor rankings, detailed scores with evidence, charts (a donut of scores by scope and a score distribution), and recommendations where the analysis generated them. Pair these exports with the rerun and carry-forward rationale when preparing the award record. See Award readiness for what the committee pack should contain.

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Best practices

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