Procurement User
Run the question round
Collect, approve and answer questions for everyone at once — the step that turns equal treatment into a function.
- Duration: 15 min
- Level: Intermediate
- Read first: Create a tender
The question round is the part of the procedure where equal treatment stops being an intention and becomes a mechanism.
How it works
Invited suppliers ask questions. You answer them, approve the answers and publish them to all invitees together, at the press of a button.
The question itself becomes visible; who asked it does not.
Why that is more than convenience
The classic mistake in day-to-day procurement is answering one bidder by email. It is quick, it feels helpful — and it hands that bidder an information advantage nobody can reconstruct afterwards.
Here the question round is the more convenient route. That is the real achievement: fairness costs no discipline.
What you control
- Approval before publication. You decide what goes out — a question that would reveal the asker’s business details gets rephrased rather than published verbatim.
- Collective publication. Answering several questions together saves you time and saves bidders confusion.
- Timing. The question round closes before the submission deadline, otherwise somebody is pricing against an answer they can no longer incorporate.
What belongs in it, and what does not
Anything concerning the tender belongs in it. Matters affecting only one bidder — an access problem, say — belong in direct contact.
If a question shows your documents are unclear, the answer is rarely the best fix: a change notification to everyone is cleaner, because it corrects the text instead of commenting on it.
For the next tender
Recurring questions are the best feedback you will get on the quality of your documents. Whatever was asked three times belongs in the text next time — and since you duplicate anyway, the improvement sticks.