Procurement
Vendor prequalification survey
The harder pass before an invitation to bid — capacity, references, cover and a signed declaration.
Why this survey gets sent
“We invited five companies. Two had never delivered anything of this size, one had no insurance at all, and the fourth turned out to be owned by the brother of somebody on the committee. We found all of that out after the bids were opened.”
Prequalification moves those discoveries to the cheapest moment — before anyone has priced anything. Each question here is attached to a specific risk, and the answers arrive written down, dated and signed, which is what makes a refusal explainable later.
What is in it
- Registered name, registration number and an email for this submission
- Revenue band for the last financial year, and full-time headcount
- The largest single contract completed, with its year
- Three reference projects, each with someone to call
- Insurance cover in force (multiple choice)
- Incidents that cost working time in the last 3 years
- Subcontracting and conflict-of-interest declarations (yes / no)
- The declaration itself, signed and stamped (file upload)
About 8 min to answer
Vendor prequalification survey
About 8 min
How to write this survey
This is not registration with more boxes
Registration answers “who are you?”. Prequalification answers “can you carry this contract?”. The difference is not the number of fields but their kind: every question here should point at a specific risk you are trying to avoid — delivery stopping halfway, an accident on your site, or a signed page with nobody standing behind it.
So send it to fewer companies, and send it after registration rather than before. Prequalifying everybody who knocks produces thick files nobody reads, and it loses you the good small supplier who saw 20 hard questions before knowing whether you had a need at all.
Ask for a band, and always name the currency
Ask for revenue as a band rather than an exact figure. A band is answered more honestly because it does not expose the company's accounts, and it tells you everything you needed: whether your contract is a tenth of their year or three times it. A supplier for whom you would be half the revenue is a risk to you and to them.
Say the currency in the question itself, or ask for the answer “in your reporting currency” as this template does. Bands with no currency get filled in three different ones and stop being comparable — a mistake that shows up only when you sit down to sort the answers.
A reference is a phone number, not an adjective
Ask for the reference in full: the client, the scope, the year, and somebody you may call. “Our clients are major organisations” is not a reference, and a ministry named with no project and no year is not one either. The line that carries a phone number is the only line anybody can verify, and its presence alone changes what a supplier writes above it.
Ask for three, not ten. Three get read and telephoned; ten get pasted from an old presentation. And keep the largest single completed contract as its own question with its year beside it — it is the sharpest signal of the size a company can really carry, and the hardest thing to exaggerate in front of a referee who is about to be called.
Ask the uncomfortable questions plainly
Safety and conflict-of-interest questions are written plainly, not apologetically. “Does any owner, board member or employee of yours have a family tie or a financial interest with anyone on our side?” is a yes-or-no question, and the dated record of that answer is what protects you later. A soft wording hands anyone who wanted to hide something a ready excuse: “I did not understand that it included me.”
Follow every yes with an optional open box for the detail, because a declared tie is rarely the problem — the hidden one is. Subcontracting works the same way: do not ask whether it is forbidden, ask whether it happens and who does the work. What you know about, you can manage.
Set the pass mark before the first answer arrives
Decide before you send the link what disqualifies a company and what is merely a conversation: no insurance in force, five lost-time incidents in three years, a declaration returned unsigned. When the rule is written down in advance, reading the responses becomes an hour of sorting rather than a meeting of opinions, and a refusal becomes something you can explain to the company that asks.
Then close with the declaration printed on the page, followed by an upload of the signed and stamped copy. Showing the text before the upload means the person signing reads what they are signing, and the attachment gives you a page with a name behind it. Add a sentence obliging the supplier to tell you within 30 days if any answer stops being true — prequalification is good for a year, not forever.