The afternoon that gets spent every time
A tender asks for three comparable assignments completed in the last seven years. Somebody starts a group email. Two colleagues reply with projects they remember; one of them is out of date. The completion certificate is in a folder named after a client that has since rebranded, the contract value is in the finance system, and the person who ran the assignment left in March. By the time three references are assembled, an afternoon of senior time is gone — and when the submission goes out, that afternoon's work goes with it. The next tender starts the same way.
The question is not which project was your best. It is which project you can still prove, to someone who was not there, before Thursday.
Read what the document means by comparable
Comparable is never left to your judgement, and the qualifier is often in a different sentence from the requirement. "Three similar projects" and "three similar projects completed within the last seven years, at least one in a country of comparable income classification, each of a value not less than the estimated contract value" are different requirements, and the second is the one you will be scored against. Extract the whole condition before you search, because searching against a half-read requirement produces a shortlist you then have to throw away.
The four tests an evaluator applies
These recur across published guidance and across the standard forms funders use to collect experience. Invert them: they are not only what you will be judged on, they are the query.
- Recency. Inside the stated window, measured from completion rather than from award. A project that ran for four years may fall outside a five-year window even though it feels recent.
- Relevance. The same kind of work, not the same sector. A water utility billing system is closer to a power utility billing system than to a water treatment plant, and evaluators reading a technical criterion usually know that.
- Scope. The services you actually performed, in the role you actually held. Work delivered as a subconsultant is scored differently from work delivered as lead, and claiming the assignment rather than your share of it is the most common way a strong reference is disqualified.
- Magnitude. Value, duration, team size or beneficiaries — whichever the document names. Where it names a threshold, a project below it contributes nothing regardless of how well it went.
The fifth test, which is the one that decides
None of the four matters if you cannot evidence the project. Formal tenders do not accept experience as an assertion: they ask for a completion certificate, a client reference letter, a signed contract page, or a named contact who will answer. So evidence availability is not a step that comes after selection — it is a filter that belongs inside it. Shortlist on all five together, and a project you cannot document drops out before anyone drafts a paragraph about it.
- Our reading, not a rule
- Running evidence availability as a fifth filter rather than as a final check is ProposalOS's own recommendation, not a rule any funder publishes.
Where the proof lives, and how it decays
The reason this is slow is that one project's proof is normally split across at least three places and one person. Knowing where each part lives is most of the work, and each part ages differently.
- The completion certificate or acceptance document — a file, usually in a project folder, occasionally only in someone's mailbox. It does not expire, but it becomes unfindable when the folder structure changes.
- The commercial facts — contract value, dates, your share as lead or member. These live in a finance or project system and are the most reliable of the four.
- The named staff and their roles — needed because experience requirements and key-expert requirements are usually scored together. This decays fastest: people leave.
- The client contact — the part most likely to be silently wrong. Confirm it before you cite it, not after an evaluator has tried to call.
Write the reference so it survives evaluation
An evaluator scoring twenty submissions is looking for specific facts in a specific order, usually the order the form asked for them. A reference written as a narrative forces them to hunt, and anything they cannot find quickly is scored as absent rather than as implied. State the client, the assignment, your role, the dates, the value, the services performed and the outcome — then attach the proof to the claim rather than collecting all the annexes at the back where nobody connects them.
When nothing matches
Sometimes the honest answer is that you do not have three qualifying references, and finding that out on day one is the most valuable outcome this process has. It converts into a decision: decline, or partner with a firm whose record covers the gap, or bid knowing you will lose points there and compensate where the marks are heavier. All three are better than discovering it in week two with the senior time already spent.
Primary sources
- World Bank, Standard Request for Proposals: Selection of Consultants (January 2020)Section 3, Technical Proposal Standard Forms
- World Bank, Evaluating Bids and Proposals with Rated Criteria (February 2025)
Quotations are reproduced from the published document at the date shown above. Procurement documents are revised, and the request for proposals you receive governs your bid — check the clause in your own tender before relying on it.