Dual envelope bidding separates technical and commercial proposals into two distinct evaluation stages, so price never influences the technical score.
It is standard practice on regulated or high-value tenders, and it is also one of the easiest processes to get wrong when run manually in spreadsheets, where nothing actually stops an evaluator from seeing the price before finishing the technical review.
The process, step by step
- Define technical criteria before the tender opens. Scoring weights set after proposals arrive are the fastest way to make an award indefensible later.
- Issue the technical and commercial envelopes separately. Bidders submit both, but only the technical envelope is opened first.
- Score technical merit and lock the scores. Once evaluators finalize technical scoring, it should not be editable — not by mistake, and not under pressure once prices are known.
- Open the commercial envelope only after the technical gate closes. This is the step that manual spreadsheet processes most often skip under deadline pressure.
- Reconcile technical and commercial together for the award decision. Now price is a legitimate input — it just was not one during technical scoring.
- Retain the full trail. Every score, timestamp, and sequence step should be reconstructable without relying on someone’s memory of what happened.
Where this breaks down manually
The most common failure is not intentional. It is a technical evaluator who has already seen a price in an email thread, or a spreadsheet where nothing enforces the sequence, so the commercial tab gets opened "just to check" before scoring finishes. None of that is corruption. It is just what happens when the sequence depends on discipline instead of the system enforcing it.
dmp’s bid evaluation module enforces this sequencing at the system level: the commercial envelope is not accessible until the technical gate closes, for any role.