Can the delivery team actually fulfil this tender?

Scope

Capacity has no meaning until the delivery scenario is fixed

Begin with one decision object. Record the procedure identifier, notice or invitation version, lot and the tender documents that control delivery. Add the expected award date, earliest mobilization activity, contractual commencement, service term, sites, buyer working windows and any required cutover or readiness milestone. If the buyer offers alternative start dates or volumes, create separate scenarios. A blended scenario cannot tell the approver which commitment was tested.

Separate source values from supplier assumptions. A date printed in the contract schedule is source evidence. A four-week standstill allowance, an assumed 15-day buyer data handover or a forecast award slip is a planning assumption unless the procurement documents say otherwise. Store each assumption with an owner, reason, range and impact. If the feasibility result depends on it, the assumption is a condition of the result.

Delivery scope comes from more than the statement of work. Include service levels, opening hours, response times, security conditions, reporting, acceptance, buyer dependencies, transition duties, contract options and the submitted solution where they change demand. Keep optional volumes separate until the contract says whether the bidder must hold capacity for them. The goal is a defensible operating scenario, not the largest imaginable workload or the most convenient base case.

This scope step stops short of interpreting disputed legal obligations. Record the clause and its operational reading. Send a material ambiguity to the authorized clarification or legal owner. An agent may show two scenarios for two plausible readings, but it should not choose the cheaper reading and describe it as the contract.

Demand

Build demand by activity, period and constraint before assigning names

Break the scenario into work packages that finish with an observable output or readiness condition. For each activity, capture the earliest start, duration range, predecessors and milestone consequence. Then describe the resource demand. A role label alone is too weak. The row needs the skill or authorization, productive quantity, minimum simultaneous presence, location, working pattern, equipment and the reason that the resource is needed.

Use units that reflect the obligation. Person-days work for ordinary project activity when the day length and calendar are defined. Named shifts are better for a service desk. Two engineers for a six-hour joint cutover is a concurrency requirement, not twelve interchangeable hours. One qualified safety lead present at each of three simultaneous sites is three people even when the total inspection effort is small. Equipment can be constrained in the same way: a test environment, vehicle or certified device may be needed by several tasks at once.

Show demand source and derivation separately. “Two trainers per site” may come directly from a buyer schedule. “Twenty-four trainer-days” may be a calculation from six sites, two trainers and two days per site. Keep the formula and rounding rule. If an agent extracts a table from a PDF or converts weeks to working days, retain the raw statement, the transformation and the calendar used. A clean total without that lineage is difficult to challenge.

Do not lower demand to match the people found later. If delivery leadership proposes a different method, create a revised scenario with the change, operational rationale, buyer compliance check and approval state. The original demand remains available for comparison.

Supply

A person counts only in the periods and conditions where they can be used

Build supply from the same dimensions as demand. Record a named person or controlled pool, employer or supplying entity, verified skills, base location, approved working pattern, relevant equipment access and the periods under review. Add who supplied the evidence and when. If a qualification or clearance expires before the activity, it cannot cover that row without a separately approved renewal condition.

Net available capacity for a period is approved gross capacity minus signed client work, internal operational duties, leave, training, travel and protected contingency. Keep every deduction visible. Do not infer availability from a blank calendar, a missing timesheet or the absence of a resource booking. The resource owner may know about an extension, incident rotation or priority programme that has not reached the planning system.

Classify supply before using it. Reserved capacity has an authorized allocation to this scenario. Available capacity is confirmed free but not yet reserved. Conditional capacity depends on a stated event such as release from a current contract, signed partner allocation, accepted job offer or clearance. Unverified capacity has no current owner evidence. Unavailable capacity is protected elsewhere or fails a required condition. Only reserved and approved available capacity can support fit confirmed, and the record should still say whether reservation must happen before bid approval.

Protect the information. A delivery decision usually needs role, capability, availability band, entity, location and owner confirmation. It rarely needs health details, private calendar entries or a full personnel file. Keep personal evidence in its authorized system and link to an access-controlled reference. Publish only the minimum decision facts.

Evidence

Passing a participation condition does not reserve the delivery team

Public procurement rules explain why buyers ask about resources, but the buyer’s test and the bidder’s operating test are different. Section 22 of the UK Procurement Act 2023 allows proportionate conditions about legal and financial capacity or technical ability to perform the contract. Current Cabinet Office guidance, updated on 17 August 2026, separates those conditions from award criteria and notes that evidence may be independently verifiable. A supplier that satisfies the condition may still have a conflict in the proposed start month. The delivery fit record therefore cites the buyer condition, records the submitted evidence and performs a separate dated capacity calculation.

Article 58 of Directive 2014/24/EU similarly concerns the human and technical resources and experience required to perform to an appropriate quality standard. Annex XII and the European Single Procurement Document include evidence such as technical staff, qualifications, average annual manpower, managerial staff, equipment and intended subcontracting. These are useful evidence categories. Historical workforce and equipment declarations do not identify the people or assets that remain free for a future milestone.

Third-party capacity needs two checks. Under Article 63 of the Directive, a bidder relying on another entity must prove that the necessary resources will be at its disposal; where qualifications or professional experience are relied upon, that entity must perform the work for which those capacities are required. The exact tender and governing rules control the submission. Internally, the fit assessment also needs dates, quantities, location, work package, authority and conflicts. A generic letter about cooperation may address none of them.

Treat minimum eligibility as a gate and delivery fit as a current scenario result. Keep both. Do not use an internal shortage to rewrite a buyer criterion, and do not use a passed criterion to overrule the delivery owner.

Schedule

The bottleneck sits where scarce capacity meets an inflexible activity

Assign eligible supply to activities and recalculate the schedule. Do not preserve a milestone by allowing the same person to occupy two tasks at once. Use the working calendars, travel limits and shift rules from the supply view. If an activity can use a pool, set the skill and concurrency requirements before the scheduler chooses people. If a task requires one named specialist, model that person directly.

The GAO Schedule Assessment Guide describes a reliable schedule as one that captures all activities, sequences them logically, assigns resources, validates the critical path, identifies reasonable float, analyzes schedule risk, updates actual progress and maintains a controlled baseline. A pre-bid assessment need not copy a 240-page audit method. It does need the same discipline where the conclusion depends on time. Resource loading may create a different critical path from the unresourced bid plan.

Inspect peak demand and near-critical paths. A role with 100 person-days of free capacity across a year may still fail a 30-day window that requires two people continuously. Float is usable only when the predecessor logic, buyer dates and resource calendars allow it. A ten-day delay on a noncritical activity may be harmless, while one missing day from the only clearance holder can move service commencement.

Use ranges when duration or volume is uncertain. Test a base case and a named stress case with the same method. Do not convert the probability output of a schedule risk analysis into a promise to the buyer. It informs the internal feasibility judgment and the amount of time or capacity contingency that the authorized owner may choose to protect.

Treatments

A cure becomes capacity only after its dependency closes

A gap can have a credible treatment without being closed. Record the treatment, affected demand row, owner, approval authority, earliest decision date, lead-time basis, dependencies and the evidence that will change the supply state. Examples include an authorized release from current work, a signed subcontractor allocation, a completed internal transfer, an accepted employment offer with a feasible start date, an approved delivery redesign or a buyer-issued change to the timetable.

Keep commercial optimism out of the state. “We can probably hire” is unverified. A funded requisition with a market lead-time range is conditional. An accepted candidate may still depend on notice period, screening, equipment and onboarding. An affiliate has no capacity in the record until the supplying entity and allocation owner confirm the work, period and quantity. The same rule applies to a subcontractor whose capability is well documented but whose delivery team has not committed.

Treatments must respect the tender. Moving work offshore, replacing a named person, changing on-site coverage, reducing transition activity or delaying a milestone may need buyer permission or may conflict with the proposed solution. The internal team can model the alternative, but only the tender documents or an authorized buyer clarification can change the obligation.

Set a closure gate before the bid becomes binding. If the tender permits the condition to be satisfied by award or commencement, record that exact date and source. Otherwise use the internal commitment gate. A conditional fit should never arrive at submission with no owner watching its unresolved dependencies.

Worked example

A twelve-week depot rollout fails in weeks three through six

Consider a fictional single-lot tender for a logistics platform across six depots. The buyer expects mobilisation to start on 11 January 2027, site training in weeks nine through eleven and one coordinated cutover in week twelve. The response outline looks credible. It lists a programme lead, migration lead, integration team, partner trainers and service lead. The first capacity pass also looks positive because the supplier employs three integration engineers and the training partner has ten trainers.

The dated supply view changes the result. The programme lead has approved 0.6 FTE capacity, which covers the scenario. The migration lead remains committed to a signed client extension until the end of week five. Only one integration engineer is free in weeks three through six, while the interface plan requires two working concurrently. The partner’s letter says it intends to support the bid but gives no sites, dates, quantities or allocation authority. Two trainers are tentatively available, yet the delivery plan needs paired trainers at simultaneous depot windows. The service lead and cutover engineers are covered.

Resource loading puts migration preparation and interface testing on the critical path. Moving the migration lead to week six delays the earliest tested cutover by fifteen business days. Splitting the interfaces across one engineer avoids double booking but creates the same date failure. The training row remains unresolved because a corporate capability statement cannot show who will cover the site windows.

The record therefore returns not_fit on current evidence. It carries three blocking rows: migration timing, integration concurrency and partner allocation. A later buyer start, an approved internal specialist release or a dated partner commitment could produce a different scenario. None is counted yet. The bid authority receives the blockers and treatment gates rather than a green score diluted by the roles that passed.

Decision

Return the evidence and stopping point, not a single capacity score

Use five top-level states. fit_confirmed means every critical dimension is covered by reserved or approved_available supply and the schedule meets the scenario with the approved contingency. conditional_fit means the scenario works only if named conditions close by their gates. not_fit means at least one blocking demand cannot be covered under the current scenario. indeterminate means material scope or supply evidence is missing. authorization_missing means the facts may exist, but the reviewer cannot obtain a decision from the person entitled to provide it. Keep the dimension results underneath the top-level state.

Make the record inspectable by another person or agent. Include stable IDs, source locators, observed times, raw demand statements, derivations, calendars, demand and supply units, resource states, owner assertions, schedule version, conflicts, treatments, decision rationale and expiry triggers. Avoid publishing confidential client allocations or personal details. A public or broadly shared summary can expose demand, coverage state, evidence class and responsible function while the underlying authorized system retains the sensitive proof.

An agent can extract tender dates and resource conditions, create demand rows, detect overlaps, run arithmetic, load a scenario and draft the decision. It must preserve the source and every assumption. It should abstain when identity, scope, authorization or private evidence is missing. It cannot make a blank calendar authoritative, disclose personal data, move someone off a client, bind a partner, approve overtime or promise a treatment in the tender.

Expire the decision on a tender amendment, lot or volume change, revised award or start date, new current-work commitment, resource departure, leave change, failed hiring gate, changed partner allocation, qualification expiry, schedule redesign or passage of the review interval. Recompute affected rows first, then the critical path and top-level state. The historical record remains unchanged so the team can see which assumption or commitment moved the decision.

This assessment hands evidence to the bid authority. A positive result does not prove eligibility, attractive economics, acceptable contract terms or strategic value. A negative result does not select a partner or authorize a buyer clarification. Those decisions need their own records and owners.