Departmental Evaluation of Tenders (DET) is a formal evaluation method where you assess technical merit and price separately, typically for lower-value procurements under standing offers or supply arrangements. The Supply Manual doesn't actually use the "DET" label, but Section 4.50 establishes the core principle: when using point-rated and financial criteria, technical and financial evaluations must be conducted separately. This approach gives you a structured way to balance capability against cost without letting price color your technical judgment.
How It Works
Under Supply Manual Section 4.50, you must establish and approve your evaluation criteria and methodology before you issue the solicitation, then apply them consistently to every bid. In a DET-style evaluation, you first score each bidder's technical response against your predetermined criteria—experience, proposed methodology, resource qualifications—without looking at their pricing. Only after technical scoring is complete do you open the financial envelopes and calculate which compliant bidder offers the best overall value according to your formula.
This method shows up constantly when you're making call-ups against standing offers or awarding contracts through supply arrangements. Section 4.70 of the Supply Manual confirms that these call-ups must follow the selection methodology defined in the arrangement itself, which often specifies a point-rated system. PSPC and individual departments use this approach for recurring needs—IT services, office supplies, consulting—where technical capability matters but you're not running a full Request for Proposal every time. The technical threshold is usually a pass/fail gate or minimum score, and financial evaluation determines the winner among technically compliant bids.
In practice, DET aligns with the simplified competitive approaches allowed under Section 3.25 for low dollar value procurements, provided you respect fairness, openness, and transparency. You're using a proportional evaluation process that matches the risk and complexity of the requirement. Treasury Board's Directive on the Management of Procurement requires that your evaluation criteria be set before solicitation and applied transparently—DET satisfies that mandate while giving you flexibility to tailor scoring weights to what actually matters for your project.
Key Considerations
- Separate your evaluators if possible. Having different team members handle technical and financial reviews reduces the risk that price knowledge influences technical scoring, and strengthens your defensibility if a bidder challenges your decision.
- Your standing offer or supply arrangement documents control the process. If the SO/SA specifies a particular evaluation formula or minimum technical score, you can't deviate when making individual call-ups—Section 4.70 locks you into the published methodology.
- There's no fixed dollar threshold that triggers DET. Departments choose this method based on the requirement's complexity and the instruments they're using (standing offers, supply arrangements), not because a regulation mandates it above or below a certain value.
- Document everything. Your evaluation plan, scoring sheets, consensus notes, and any clarifications with bidders create the audit trail that demonstrates you followed your stated criteria and treated everyone fairly.
Related Terms
Standing Offer, Supply Arrangement, Best Value, Rated Criteria, Request for Standing Offers (RFSO)
Sources
- Supply Manual – Section 4.50: Evaluation of bids
- Supply Manual – Section 4.70: Use of standing offers and supply arrangements
- Treasury Board Directive on the Management of Procurement
The separate technical and financial evaluation isn't just bureaucratic formality—it's your best defense against bias and your clearest path to a defensible award decision when you're balancing quality and cost.