The Schedule Is the Question

Two Defence estate tenders can ask a contractor for the same draft Work Health and Safety Plan. On one, the plan earns marks. On the other, it only has to pass.

Both outcomes sit in Defence's current templates, updated in December 2025. Under the Estate Works Program (EWP) Medium Works template, draft project plans form part of a weighted "project understanding" criterion, alongside task appreciation and methodology. Under the Medium Works and Head Contract templates in Defence's Suite of Facilities Contracts, draft project plans carry no weighting. They are assessed only on whether the criterion is met.

A bid team that spends its best week polishing a plan that only needs to pass has spent that week in the wrong place.

Edition 17 mapped where the six weeks between release and close go. This edition is about what you build in them: a response built around Defence's questions, not your company's story. And those questions change from one template to the next.

The schedule is the question

A tender built on these templates ends in a set of Tender Schedules. Each evaluation criterion in clause 4(a) of the Tender Conditions points to one of them, noting that the type of information the Commonwealth is seeking is set out there. In practice, the schedules are the marking guide, published before you write a word.

The weighted criteria are not the same across templates:

• EWP Medium Works: project understanding, workload and proposed resources, previous performance, and program.

• Medium Works and Head Contract: proposed resources, previous performance (where the Tender Particulars apply it), program, and industry inclusion and skills. On the Head Contract, the program criterion also covers a minimum resource schedule.

The templates also dictate the form of the answer. Each schedule is lodged as its own stand-alone file, and the tender must be completely self-contained, with no hyperlinks or QR codes. Defence may decide not to evaluate anything beyond a schedule's page limit. Most limits are set tender by tender, so check each one.

The consequence is easy to miss. Picture a strong capability statement placed in an appendix. If no schedule asks for it, there is no criterion for it to score against. On our reading of the templates, good content in the wrong place is simply unmarked.

The evaluator only scores what is on the page

The written response is the evidence, and the templates say so. Under clause 4(c), Defence may take into account information provided after the tender closes, but not information from pre-close meetings and clarifications under clause 7.1. A helpful conversation before close is not part of your tender.

On Defence's capital works tenders, the evaluators' own rulebook goes further. The CFI Tender Evaluation and Probity Protocol (October 2025) compares submissions on demonstrated merit by Tender Schedule, without reference to presentation style. Its standard probity briefing, used where no external probity adviser is engaged, tells evaluators to confine themselves to the material provided, and not to let prior knowledge of a tenderer's performance that is not in the submission unfairly influence them. Spelling and formatting issues are fed back to tenderers, not scored.

In plain terms, ten years of good work on a base counts only if it is written into the right schedule. A polished layout earns nothing on its own.

One caution: the protocol belongs to Defence's Capital Facilities and Infrastructure branch. We have not found a published equivalent for EWP evaluations, so treat it as Defence's stated standard for capital works, not a rule for every tender.

Research points the same way. A UNSW study of contractor selection by David Watt, drawing on 222 respondents, found past performance, technical expertise, price and project management expertise mattered most, while company reputation mattered considerably less. Prove what you will do on this job, not who you are in general.

What your answers become after award

Parts of a response follow you into delivery, and the templates are precise about which. Narratives do not bind: methodology and resourcing information is for evaluation purposes only and will not limit scope. Leaving something out of a methodology does not take it out of the job.

Other answers carry forward:

• Your program does not form part of the contract, but it becomes the basis of the initial program after award, in all three templates.

• Your preliminary design, on an EWP design and construct tender, will form part of the design, subject to negotiation.

• Your draft Local Industry Capability Plan becomes the basis of the final plan. On EWP tenders it is requested at $7.5 million or more.

• Your sustainability plan, where those requirements apply, is finalised with Defence and attached to the contract.

Nor can the response quietly rewrite the contract. Accepting it without departure is a minimum form and content requirement under clause 3.1(b) of each template, with narrow exceptions for alternative proposals and the insurance clauses. Under paragraph 10.34 of the Commonwealth Procurement Rules, only submissions that meet those requirements are considered further. Edition 20 covers this in detail.

How to build the response

A practical method for day one of the six weeks:

1. Read clause 4(a) first. Mark each criterion as weighted, pass or fail, or unweighted. Spend effort in that order.

2. Set up one file per schedule before anyone writes. Give each schedule an owner, its page limit and its file name.

3. Answer in the schedule's order and format. Where Defence supplies a table, as it does for resources and previous performance, use it.

4. Write for a stranger. Assume the evaluator knows nothing about your firm beyond what the file contains.

5. Cross-check before lodging. Schedules A and I ask for consistency with the rest of the tender, so your people, program and plans must tell one story.

6. Read every narrative for qualifying words. A phrase such as "subject to" in a methodology can look like a departure from the contract.

Research explains why this structure exists. Lundberg and Bergman found public buyers use more complex quality scoring when costs and delivered quality are uncertain, and Volker and Schotanus note that the selection model must be published before bids arrive. Defence's schedules fit that logic: they test claims Defence cannot see for itself, against rules set before close.

The page that is marked

It is tempting to treat a tender response as a sales document: say everything, as well as possible, and let the evaluator find it. Defence's templates describe something different. A tender is a set of answers to questions published in advance. Each answer is read in its own file, scored against its own criterion, and in part carried into the contract.

That changes the real question for a bid team. It is not "how good is our submission?" It is "which pages are being marked, and is our best evidence on them?"

Next week, Edition 19 looks at what Defence says it is looking for inside those pages: how substantiation and past performance are tested.