Technical Merit

Technical Merit is the quality criterion that most directly assesses whether a bidder truly understands the requirement and can deliver it well. It goes beyond confirming that a supplier meets the minimum specification and asks how well they will deliver, using what approach, and to what standard.

What is Technical Merit?

Article 67(2)(a) of Directive 2014/24/EU lists technical merit explicitly as a quality criterion that contracting authorities may use when assessing the Most Economically Advantageous Tender (MEAT) under a best price-quality ratio framework.

Technical merit is not a single, uniform concept. Contracting authorities define what they mean by technical merit in the context of each specific procurement. Common components include:

Proposed methodology or approach. How the bidder plans to deliver the contract: the sequence of activities, the management structure, the tools and techniques to be used, and the rationale for key design choices.

Solution design. For technology or infrastructure procurements, the architecture, integration approach, scalability, security posture, and resilience of the proposed solution.

Innovation. Novel approaches that go beyond standard market practice, where the authority has indicated that innovation will be rewarded. Innovation criteria under Article 67 must still be linked to the contract subject matter.

Quality assurance. The quality management systems, testing regimes, inspection processes, or certification frameworks the bidder will apply to contract delivery.

Fitness for purpose. How closely the proposed solution matches the technical specification and requirements set out in the procurement documents, and what mitigations are proposed for any deviations.

Technical merit criteria are typically broken into sub-criteria with their own weights, allowing the authority to signal which aspects of technical quality matter most. For example, a software development procurement might weight solution architecture at 15%, development methodology at 10%, and testing approach at 5% within an overall technical merit criterion of 30%.

Why Technical Merit matters for bidders

Technical merit is the criterion where specialist expertise translates into bid advantage most directly. A bidder who can articulate a genuinely superior delivery approach, backed by evidence from comparable contracts, will outscore a competitor who describes a generic methodology.

Effective technical merit responses are:

• Specific to the requirement, not generic
• Structured to address each scoring descriptor published by the authority
• Supported by concrete evidence (case studies, statistics, certifications) rather than assertions
• Clear about what the bidder will actually do, not just what good practice looks like in general

The scoring methodology used by the evaluation panel will distinguish between responses that describe an approach (good) and responses that evidence the approach with examples and measurable outcomes (excellent). Understanding this distinction is the single most valuable insight for improving technical merit scores.

Example

A Belgian federal authority procures managed IT security services. Technical merit carries 40% of the total evaluation weight. Sub-criteria are: security operations methodology 20%, incident response capability 10%, and threat intelligence approach 10%. A bidder that describes its security operations centre in detail, provides evidence of mean time-to-detect and mean time-to-respond metrics from existing contracts, and explains its specific threat intelligence feed integration approach will outscore a bidder that describes industry-standard security operations without demonstrating how it applies them.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is technical merit assessed against an absolute scale or relative to competitors?

It depends on the authority's scoring methodology. Some authorities use absolute scales where each response is scored against predefined quality descriptors independently of other bids. Others use relative scoring where the best technical response among all compliant bids receives full marks and others are scored relative to it. Absolute scoring is generally considered fairer for bidders and more predictable, but both approaches are legally permissible.

Can we refer to proprietary methodologies or certifications to evidence technical merit?

Yes, provided they are relevant to the requirement. Certifications such as ISO 9001, ISO 27001, CMMI, or sector-specific accreditations can strengthen a technical merit response. However, certifications alone do not score well: authorities expect bidders to explain how their certified processes will be applied to this specific contract.

How do I know what the evaluation panel considers excellent?

Scoring descriptors are usually published in the invitation to tender or evaluation methodology document. Read them before writing your response. If the top descriptor says "demonstrates clear understanding of the requirement with evidence of delivering comparable services," your response needs both of those elements. If scoring descriptors are not published, request them during the clarification period.