A request for tenders is a formal, structured invitation to suppliers, to bid, to supply
products or services.
In the public sector an official fee is needed to fortify and secure the tender bid engagement/win
documents, such a process may be required and determined in detail by law to ensure
that such competition for the use of public is open, fair and free from bribery and nepotism.
For example, a government may put a building project 'out to tender'; that is, publish
an invitation for other parties to make a proposal for the building's construction,
on the understanding that any competition for the relevant government contract must
be conducted in response to the tender, no parties having the unfair advantage of separate,
prior, closed-door negotiations for the contract.
An evaluation team will go through the tenders and decide who will get the contract.
As a consequence of the scale of the tender process the majority of RFTs are published
by the government sector, but companies in the infrastructure and utilities sectors may
also publish RFTs.
RFTs may be distributed to potential bidders through a tender service, allowing businesses
to receive and search live tenders from a range of public and private sources.
These alerts are most commonly sent daily and can be filtered down by geographical area,
or by business sector.
Some tendering services even divide types of business very finely in their own way,
by CPV codes.
This enables a business to find RFTs specific to what that business can supply.
The closest equivalent to an RFT in the mainstream private sector is a request for proposal,
which, since public money is not involved, typically has a less rigid structure.
An RFT is usually an open invitation for suppliers to respond to a defined need as opposed to
a request being sent to selected potential suppliers.
The RFT often requests information following on from other information gathered previously
from responses to a Request for Information.
This will usually not only cover product and service requirements, but will also ask for
information about the suitability of the business.
An RFT is usually expected to conform to some legally standardized structure designed to
ensure impartiality.
And the tender bid winner is entitled to take responsibility of the contract business supply
documentations formalities and settle any tender bid engagement charges for official
recording.
Related proposal types Other members of the family include:
EOI - expression of interest IFB - invitation for bids
ITT - invitation to tender ITV - invitation to vendors
RFA - request for applications RFD - request for documentation
RFI - request for information RFO - request for offers
RFP - request for proposal RFQ - request for quotation or request for
qualifications RFN - request for negotiation
References
External links Average tender win rates by industry
Types of tender and bid writer