QCBS in tenders: how the technical score is calculated

What is QCBS in a tender?

QCBS stands for quality and cost based selection. Instead of awarding the contract to the lowest priced compliant bidder, the buyer gives each proposal a technical score and a financial score, weights them, and picks the highest combined score. The buyer calls that winner H-1, not L1. For how the two packets are opened and kept apart, see our guide to the technical bid and financial bid.

QCBS is most common in consultancy: detailed project reports, project management consultants, IT system integrators, auditors and advisers. The Department of Expenditure's Manual for Procurement of Consultancy Services (opens in a new tab) (2025) treats least cost selection as the default and asks buyers to justify QCBS, which it reserves for complex and critical assignments where paying more for quality makes sense. Since 2021, works declared quality oriented and non-consultancy services up to ₹10 crore can also use it, with the non-financial weight capped at 30 percent.

QCBS vs L1 vs QBS: how each method picks the winner

The practical difference between L1 and QCBS shows up in your bid strategy. Under L1 you build the cheapest offer that is fully compliant. Under QCBS you have to find the point where one more rupee of price cut is worth less than one more technical mark, and that point depends on the weights.

How is the technical score built?

The RFP lists criteria and sub-criteria with maximum marks adding up to 100. The 2025 manual suggests ranges: the firm's relevant experience 5 to 10 percent, approach and methodology 20 to 50 percent, key experts 30 to 60 percent, and transfer of knowledge up to 10 percent. Firm experience is weighted lightly because it was already checked at the EOI stage.

• Each evaluator marks every proposal on its own merits against the criteria, not against the other proposals, and the committee averages the marks.
• For criteria that cannot be counted, such as methodology, the manual suggests rating bands instead of free marks: full marks for very good, 80 percent for good, 60 percent for satisfactory, 30 percent for unsatisfactory and 10 percent for not relevant.
• A minimum qualifying mark, normally 70 to 80 out of 100, is set in the RFP. Price proposals of firms below it are returned unopened.
• Key expert CVs must be signed. The manual tells evaluators to ignore unsigned CVs, and to treat a proposal where most CVs are unsigned as non-responsive.

Presentations are common, but read the marking scheme: under the manual, a presentation earns no marks unless the RFP says it does. In the BPCL bid quoted below, the presentation carried 25 of the 100 technical marks.

Normalizing scores: why your raw marks are not your final score

Before the weights are applied, both scores are converted to a common scale. Price is almost always scored the same way: the lowest evaluated price gets the full score, and every other bid gets the lowest price divided by its own price, times the full score. Technical marks are handled in at least three ways, and the method changes the gaps between bidders.

The manual writes the whole calculation as one formula: combined score = (lowest price / your price) x price weight + (your technical score / highest technical score) x (1 minus price weight). If your RFP uses raw marks without scaling, say so in your own calculation, because the margins change.

70:30, 80:20 or 50:50: what the weights do

The weight split is declared in the RFP and cannot change after bids are in. For consultancy, the manual treats 70 percent technical and 30 percent price as the reference point, allows 60:40 or 50:50, and never more than 80 percent technical. Its suggested bands are 80:20 for highly complex assignments, 65:35 to 75:25 for moderate complexity, and 50:50 to 60:40 for routine work where least cost selection would normally fit. For works and non-consultancy services the cap runs the other way: no more than 30 percent for non-financial factors.

Illustrative example: a ring road DPR consultancy in Raipur

A development authority in Raipur invites proposals for a detailed project report on a 24 km ring road. The minimum technical mark is 70. Four firms bid. S scores 66, so its price is never opened. The other three are scored at the RFP's 80:20 split, and, to show the effect of weights, at 70:30 as well.

At 80:20, P wins comfortably while quoting 62 percent more than R. Run the same bids at 70:30 and R wins, by a third of a point. Three lessons follow for bidders:

• R could not win at 80:20 by cutting price, because it was already the lowest and its financial score was capped at 100. It needed about six more technical marks: at 80 instead of 74, its total would have been 92.73.
• P had room on price. At 80:20 it could have quoted up to about ₹4.29 crore and still finished ahead of Q.
• At 70:30 the top three sit within 0.33 points of each other. In a race that close, one unsigned CV or one weak methodology sub-criterion decides the contract.

Ties, MSE preference and Make in India under QCBS

When two proposals tie on the combined score, the manual gives the contract to the one with the higher technical score. Purchase preferences are trickier. The manual notes that Make in India purchase preference applies where bids are evaluated on price alone, so it does not apply under QCBS or fixed budget selection. Some buyers still write their own rules: one BPCL consultancy bid on GeM applied MSE and local-content preference only to the price component, giving an eligible bidder within the band the same price marks as L1, and handed a tie between an MSE and a non-MSE to the MSE.

So read the preference clause in each RFP rather than assuming. For how the price band and matching work in ordinary L1 tenders, see our explainer on MSE purchase preference.

How to raise your QCBS score before you submit

1. Build a marking table from the RFP: every criterion, its maximum marks, your evidence and the marks you can prove. Gaps here cost more than any price decision.
2. Ask about subjective criteria in the pre-bid meeting. A request for the rating bands behind 'approach and methodology' is a fair query, and the answer tells you where to write more.
3. Get every key expert CV signed and dated, and check each expert against the minimum qualification and years of experience.
4. Run your own totals at the declared weights with two or three price scenarios. Under heavy technical weights, a smaller discount and a stronger proposal usually beats a deep cut.
5. Price for the scope you will actually deliver. Negotiation after opening is discouraged in consultancy buying, so a low quote rarely gets a second look.

How AI tools help with QCBS bids, and what your team decides

Building the marking table is mostly reading: the evaluation criteria, the expert qualifications, the minimum marks and the formula are scattered across the RFP and its annexures. TenderGenie's Document Intelligence extracts requirements and clauses with a reference to the source page, and its Risk & Compliance compares qualification criteria with your organization's credentials and shows which requested documents you already hold.

Whether to bid at all, what weights mean for your price, and how hard to push on discount are judgment calls for your team. Our bid/no-bid decisions page shows how that review comes together in TenderGenie.

Questions and answers