Evaluation support & negotiation
The models we built, applied by the people who built them - through bid evaluation, clarifications and the negotiation the models were designed to win.
Procurement Architecture
What does a tender cost you when the scope is copied from the last one?
A lot. If it is existing scope from a previous contract; the question is first of all; what is the learning to carry into the new tender? Because operational realities change. Scope changes, technologies change, organisations change. Always assess the basis for creating a new tender. Statistics mention 22% of tenders use the old scope of work, unrevised.
Fixed scope. Fixed fee. Three to six weeks. Five deliverables: drivers, scope, remuneration model, evaluation model, price book. A tender your board can award with confidence, and your auditors can defend.
3 weeksnational tender architecture vs 4-6 month internal estimate
5deliverables: drivers · scope · remuneration · evaluation · price book
22%of tenders reuse old scope of work, unrevised
Quick answer
Procurement architecture is the design of the commercial framework of a tender - drivers, scope, remuneration model, evaluation model and price book - completed before the tender goes to market. powerabode delivers that architecture as a fixed-scope, fixed-fee engagement in three to six weeks, and stays on through evaluation, negotiation, post-award contract management and assurance.
The definition
What is procurement architecture?
Procurement architecture is the commercial design work that happens before a tender is released. It sets what the tender is actually buying, how the contractor is paid, how bids are compared, and what the price is measured against. Technical scope answers what gets built. Procurement architecture answers what it costs over the life of the contract, and who carries which risk when reality moves.
Most tenders skip this step. The scope is copied from the last contract, the remuneration model is inherited, and the evaluation model is assembled after the bids arrive. That is how avoidable cost gets locked in for the duration of the asset - before a single bid is opened.
The offer
The five deliverables of a tender architecture
A typical powerabode project; Fixed scope. Fixed fee. Three to six weeks. Five deliverables: drivers extracted from the engineer's intent · scope · remuneration model · evaluation model · price book. A tender your board can award with confidence, and your auditors can defend.
- Drivers. The outcomes the contract exists to deliver, extracted from the engineer's intent rather than assumed from the previous tender.
- Scope. What is bought, revised against current operational reality - not carried over unrevised.
- Remuneration model. How the contractor earns, designed so that the contractor's best commercial outcome is also yours.
- Evaluation model. How bids are compared, defined before bids exist, so the award is defensible.
- Price book. The reference the price is measured against, during evaluation and for the life of the contract.
The five deliverables are one system. A remuneration model designed without the evaluation model produces a tender that cannot be scored. An evaluation model without a price book produces a score that cannot be defended. Related reading: strategic sourcing versus a sourcing strategy.
Output based delivery
How does output based delivery work?
Output based delivery. We take on the work packages and deliver your procurement processes and tenders.
You buy a deliverable, not a day rate. The scope is fixed, the fee is fixed, the date is fixed. Your team keeps ownership of the decision; we carry the production. That is the same logic we apply to the contracts we design - see tendering and outsourcing for value creation.
The record
The record: a national programme in three weeks
Tender architecture for a national hydrogen-storage programme - a world first at this scale - delivered in three weeks against the client's four-to-six-month internal estimate. Repeat-purchased.
Our client's alternative was six months. We took three weeks.
First-of-a-kind assets have no previous contract to copy, which is exactly why the architecture has to be designed rather than inherited. The full case is in commercial architecture for first-of-a-kind hydrogen infrastructure.
The stay-on ladder
What happens after the architecture?
The architecture is the beginning, not the engagement. The same models, applied by the people who built them, carry through evaluation, negotiation, execution and assurance.
Post-award contract management
Where intent is usually lost. The architecture carries into execution: performance, deviation governance, commercial control.
The service →Assurance
Continuous, independent view that the deal delivers what it was designed to deliver - for the board, the partners and the auditors.
The service →
Who this is for
Who procurement architecture is for
The large assets of the oil and gas industry - upstream and downstream - and the large maintenance programs that keep them producing. Their senior management are our partners; more precisely, we are theirs. We help them deliver cost efficiency: across capex portfolios that run to hundreds of projects and hundreds of billions, and across the shutdowns, maintenance campaigns and expansion plans it takes to operate what was built - remote, in difficult circumstances, sustaining production while competing. The supply chain and its contracts connect everything: the central pivot of cost efficiency.
Within that: project directors and asset line executives of critical and first-of-a-kind tenders - hydrogen storage and transport, CCS, ammonia terminals, offshore-wind O&M, gas-growth projects - and any tender where the cost of getting the commercial model wrong is measured in decades.
FAQ
Procurement architecture questions
This page is for tenders where the commercial model matters as much as the technical scope.
What is procurement architecture?
It is the design of the drivers, scope, remuneration model, evaluation model and price book before the tender is released.
When is it most useful?
For critical tenders, first-of-a-kind assets, complex maintenance programs and cases where copied scope would lock in avoidable cost.
Is this only for oil and gas?
The strongest proof points are in energy assets, but the logic applies wherever contract architecture controls long-term cost and performance.
What happens after the architecture?
The same logic can support evaluation, negotiation, post-award contract management and assurance.
Go deeper
The procurement architecture cluster
Commercial architecture for first-of-a-kind hydrogen
What you design when there is no previous contract to copy - and why the commercial model decides the outcome before engineering does.
Read the insight →Strategic sourcing vs a sourcing strategy
Two terms used interchangeably, with different consequences for how a category is taken to market.
Read the insight →Why rate cuts miss 70% of savings potential
Rate is one lever of four. Efficiency, specification and unnecessary demand carry the rest.
Read the insight →Tendering and outsourcing for value creation
How the tender is structured determines whether outsourcing creates value or transfers cost.
Read the insight →Aligning KPIs with contract performance
The evaluation model and the performance regime are the same design problem, separated by award.
Read the insight →Deliver as planned: predictable project surprises
Most project surprises are predictable at tender stage. The architecture is where they get priced or avoided.
Read the insight →The architecture connects to the wider chain: category and contract strategy upstream of the tender, tendering and outsourcing during it, and post-award contract management after award.
See a tender take shape
A demonstration walks your scenario through The Workbench: drivers, remuneration model, evaluation model - produced, governed, traceable. Outcome: make your roadmap with us!
See it working - book a demonstration