Speed Dating Your Tenderers: The Procurement Tool That Changed How I Buy Complex Services

There is a phrase I use that tends to stop people in their tracks the first time they hear it.

Speed dating your tenderers.

I usually see the same reaction: confusion, amusement, scepticism, and then, once I explain it, relief.

Because once people understand the concept, they immediately recognise the problem it solves.

Written submissions can tell you what a supplier wants you to believe. Structured interaction tells you whether they actually understand the job.

The Problem with How We Evaluate

There is a pattern that anyone who has spent serious time in procurement will recognise.

A major contract is awarded. The written submission was polished. The methodology looked sound. The team on paper was impressive. The price was competitive. Every box was ticked.

And then delivery begins.

The project director promised in the tender turns out to be a phantom: named to win the work, reassigned the moment the ink dried. The methodology described in flowing prose turns out to be theoretical. The organisation that presented as deeply experienced in your industry turns out to have Googled most of it. And the relationship that was supposed to last five years begins unravelling inside five months.

This is not bad luck, it is a structural problem, and it starts with how we evaluate.

A well-resourced bid team can make almost any organisation look credible on paper. They can write compelling methodology, populate CVs with impressive credentials, reference projects that bear only passing resemblance to yours, and describe a collaborative culture that exists nowhere in the organisation’s actual DNA.

What a written submission cannot tell you:

• whether the people named in the tender will actually deliver the work;
• whether the methodology has ever been applied in an environment like yours;
• how the team performs under pressure and uncertainty;
• whether the organisation genuinely understands your operating context;
• whether the chemistry and culture required for a long-term partnership actually exists; and
• whether the solution proposed is real or aspirational.

In complex procurements, these are not minor details. They are often the difference between success and failure.

Speed Dating, and Why It Works

Early Contractor Involvement, or ECI, is one formal procurement model where this type of structured early engagement is commonly used. What I call “speed dating” is the interactive evaluation component: bringing shortlisted tenderers into structured, scored sessions before final offers are locked down.

It is not new. It has been used in major infrastructure, resources and technically complex projects for decades, particularly where a purely written evaluation process is inadequate.

The principle is straightforward. Rather than keeping the client and supplier at arm’s length until a contract is signed, the process creates structured engagement during procurement, before award, so the client can test capability, methodology, team fit, commercial understanding and delivery approach in real time.

In practice, all shortlisted tenderers are brought in within a short window, in my experience within 24 hours of each other. Each session runs for several hours. The same evaluation panel attends each session wherever practicable. The same criteria are assessed. Scoring happens immediately after each session, before the next supplier walks in the door.

It is called speed dating because that is exactly what it feels like: rapid, structured, face-to-face engagement designed to test whether there is a genuine fit. The session often reveals very quickly whether there is genuine understanding, capability and alignment, but the decision still needs to be made through structured scoring and documented evaluation.

The sessions can include solution workshops, team presentations, site familiarisation, scenario testing and structured reference interactions, whatever is most relevant to the complexity and risk of the specific procurement.

The critical design principle is that the interaction happens before the final written submission is locked. Suppliers refine their offer based on what they learn. Clients get a submission that actually reflects the conversation. Any information provided to one supplier that could materially affect the tender must either be shared with all relevant suppliers or managed through a clearly documented clarification process.

A Case Study: O&M Contracting in Oil and Gas

Let me tell you about one of the early times I ran this process, because it illustrates both why it works and why getting there requires courage.

I was working on an Operations and Maintenance contract for a junior oil and gas company in Australia. This was a genuinely complex engagement. We were introducing a relatively new cost model built around the principles of relational contracting and risk-reward sharing, which I will cover in a future article. The model required something that a standard RFx process simply cannot deliver: a supplier who genuinely understood our drivers, not just our specification.

Adding to the complexity, we were time-boxed. Investors needed operations to commence as soon as possible. There was no room for a lengthy traditional tender process, multiple rounds of clarification, and a written evaluation that might still leave us uncertain about who we were dealing with.

So I proposed speed dating.

To say management and the evaluation team were unfamiliar with the concept would be an understatement. I had to be persuasive. I had to walk everyone through the process, explain the probity framework, and ask them to trust me on something none of them had done before. That is not a comfortable position to be in. But I believed in it, and I made the case.

We brought all tenderers through within 24 hours of each other. Three hours per session. Fully scored against pre-defined evaluation criteria covering capability, team, methodology, cultural alignment, and understanding of our cost model and commercial drivers.

The result was immediate and unambiguous. With the right supplier, the conversation was different. They spoke the same language. They understood what was driving our decision: the investor timeline, the relational model, the risk-reward framework. They did not just respond to the specification; they engaged with our problem.

Critically, they loved the format. They told us afterwards it was the best procurement process they had ever participated in, because it gave them a genuine opportunity to demonstrate who they actually were rather than what their bid writers could make them sound like.

The written submission still happened, but it was structured specifically for our needs, shaped by everything that had come out of the speed dating sessions. It was not a generic RFx response. It was a tailored offer from a supplier who understood exactly what they were committing to.

The contract delivered the outcome we needed, and the quality of the relationship was materially stronger because expectations, risks and commercial drivers had been tested before award.

The Probity Question

The most common objection I hear when I propose ECI-style interaction is probity.

If you are engaging with suppliers before award, how do you ensure fairness? How do you prevent information asymmetry? How do you protect the integrity of the process?

These are legitimate questions. They also have well-established answers.

The key is structure. Interactive tendering sessions must be:

• held on the same terms for all shortlisted suppliers;
• run to the same format, duration and evaluation criteria;
• attended by the same evaluation panel wherever practicable;
• scored against pre-determined criteria, with scoring completed immediately after each session;
• documented to create a clear audit trail;
• governed by confidentiality and conflict-of-interest controls;
• designed to clarify, test and verify capability, not to give one supplier an unfair opportunity to improve its offer; and
• managed so that any material information provided to one supplier is also made available to all relevant suppliers or otherwise managed through the documented clarification process.

When these conditions are met, interactive evaluation is not a shortcut around probity. It is a more sophisticated way of gathering evidence.

In my experience, the probity objection is often less about genuine risk and more about unfamiliarity, which is exactly why bringing people along for the ride, as I had to do in that oil and gas procurement, is such an important part of the process.

When To Use It

ECI-style interaction is not appropriate for every procurement. For straightforward, low-risk or transactional contracts, the overhead is unnecessary and the benefit marginal.

But for any procurement that meets two or more of the following criteria, it should be seriously considered:

• the contract is complex, long-term or technically demanding;
• the cost of supplier failure is high, financially, operationally or reputationally;
• the relationship between client and supplier will require genuine collaboration over time;
• the solution cannot be fully specified upfront and will require joint development;
• you are introducing a new commercial model that requires the supplier to genuinely understand your drivers;
• you are time-boxed and cannot afford a lengthy traditional process with multiple clarification rounds; or
• previous procurements in this category have underdelivered.

This description fits a significant proportion of major IT, infrastructure, resources, defence, health and utilities procurements. It fits managed services. It fits transformation programmes. It fits any engagement where you are not just buying a product but entering into a relationship.

The Uncomfortable Truth

The reason ECI-style interaction is not more widely used, particularly in government and regulated industries, is not that it is impractical or non-compliant. It is that it requires more sophistication, more effort and more courage from procurement professionals than a written evaluation process does.

It can feel easier to defend a decision made on paper than one shaped through structured interaction. But when the interaction is planned, scored and documented properly, the audit trail can be stronger, because the evaluation captures what the supplier can actually do, not just what they can write.

Easier is not the same as better.

I have watched written-submission-only processes produce expensive failures in virtually every industry I have worked in. And I have watched ECI-style interaction, done properly, with structure and rigour, produce exactly the kind of outcome it is designed to produce: the right supplier, genuinely understood, committed to a relationship rather than just a contract.

You cannot manufacture chemistry. You cannot fake understanding. And a written submission, however polished, will never fully show you either.

For complex, high-value, relationship-based contracts, the question is not whether you should talk to your tenderers.

The question is whether you are willing to design the process properly enough to make that conversation fair, structured and useful.

Speed date your tenderers.

Done properly, you will learn things the written submission was never going to tell you.

This is Article 1 in The Procurement Toolkit, a series by Barb Rebola, Procurement Associates, covering the practical tools available to procurement professionals working on complex, high-value engagements. Article 2 covers Key Personnel Clauses and Retention Mechanisms.

Barb Rebola is a Sourcing Management Consultant at Procurement Associates, specialising in complex procurement strategy across resources, infrastructure, utilities and government sectors.