Describe the contract, trade, or supply category you plan to bid. Makeform turns your requirements into a structured prequalification questionnaire for comparing experience, capacity, safety practices, quality controls, references, and supporting documents before you build a bidder list.
Route responses to Google Sheets, Slack, and Zapier.
Sample prompts for the builder
Choose a complete prompt, tailor it to the package, or send it into the Makeform builder. The structure shown is an example, not a submitted assessment.
Audience
General contractors seeking an invitation to bid
Format
Multi-section questionnaire with document uploads
Prompt size
494 chars
Example questionnaire structure
Multi-section questionnaire with document uploads
Company profile and primary contact
Three comparable completed projects
Current workload and available capacity
Safety and quality program documents
Response declaration
Suggested routing tags
Review needed
Meets baseline
Clarification requested
Ask for evidence dates, project values, and client references. A yes-or-no capability claim is difficult to compare without context.
Step 1
Define
package scope and minimum criteria
Step 2
Collect
capabilities, evidence, and references
Step 3
Review
compare responses on one structure
Step 4
Shortlist
invite suitable firms to bid
Before the bid invitation
A prequalification questionnaire separates the evidence needed to enter the competition from the commercial bid itself, giving reviewers a consistent record for every interested firm.
Ask every firm for projects, capacity, references, and documents in the same order, with dates and values that make responses easier to review.
Conditional sections can show trade, region, manufacturing, or subcontracting questions only when the respondent's earlier choices make them relevant.
Send complete submissions to a shared inbox or sheet, tag responses that need clarification, and keep attachments with the company record.
Built for sourcing teams
Start with the closest scenario, then replace the sample criteria with the requirements and evidence your review team will actually use.
Project history, team, workload, delivery approach, safety practices, quality controls, references, and attachments.
Trade coverage, licensing details, field labor, supervision, equipment, current commitments, and scope-specific questions.
Product ranges, facilities, production capacity, lead times, logistics, quality processes, and continuity planning.
Coverage, staffing, dispatch, escalation, response ranges, subcontractor use, commercial model, and customer references.
Prequalification workflow
Turn the information your evaluators need into a questionnaire, test the routing, and collect one structured response per company before bids are invited.
Name the work, contract size or supply category, locations, schedule, and the types of firms you want to screen.
Edit the generated questions, define reporting periods, require essential attachments, and label optional information clearly.
Show manufacturer questions to manufacturers, trade questions to matching subcontractors, and clarification fields after risk disclosures.
Share one link, notify the sourcing team, export structured responses, and request clarification without relying on mismatched email attachments.
Questionnaire vs email vs bid form
Prequalification determines who should receive the bid package. The later proposal or bid form collects how shortlisted firms would price and deliver the actual scope.
Field guide
Use criteria that connect to the package and can be reviewed consistently. Ask for a reporting period or supporting detail whenever a bare yes-or-no answer would be ambiguous.
Company profile
Capture the legal and trading names, locations, ownership structure, years operating, primary contact, and the person authorized to answer clarifications. Keep registration questions tied to the jurisdictions and scope involved.
Relevant experience
Request a small number of comparable projects or supply contracts using the same fields. Dates, values, scope, delivery role, outcome notes, and client contacts provide more review value than an unrestricted project list.
Capacity & resources
A firm may have relevant experience but no room in its schedule. Ask about current commitments, available people, facilities, equipment, production throughput, lead times, and proposed key roles for the expected delivery period.
Safety & risk
Request the safety processes, performance measures, incident information, insurance details, claims or disputes, and corrective actions that your internal reviewers have chosen. Always state the time period and give firms room to explain events.
Quality & delivery
Ask how work is checked, defects or nonconformances are handled, changes are approved, records are retained, and the supply chain is monitored. Tailor terminology to construction, services, manufacturing, or distribution.
Declarations & attachments
List required attachments beside their upload fields and ask an authorized contact to confirm that the information is accurate to the best of their knowledge. Include a clarification contact and explain how responses will be reviewed.
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Open toolFAQ
Practical answers for procurement and construction teams preparing a contractor or supplier shortlist.
A prequalification questionnaire is a structured set of questions used to assess a contractor's or supplier's experience, capacity, resources, risk information, quality processes, and references before deciding whether to invite that firm to bid. It creates a consistent early-stage record; it is not the commercial bid itself.
Start with company details, relevant project history, current workload, proposed people and equipment, safety information, quality controls, insurance details, subcontracting approach, references, required documents, disclosures, and a response declaration. Tailor every section to the project scope and the criteria your reviewers will use.
Prequalification assesses whether a firm should enter the competition. An RFP or bid request asks an invited firm to propose a price, schedule, methodology, exceptions, and commercial terms for a defined scope. Keeping the stages separate prevents basic capability screening from getting buried inside detailed bids.
Yes. Keep shared company, risk, reference, and declaration sections, then use branching for respondent type. Contractors can receive project staffing and site-safety questions, while suppliers receive manufacturing capacity, lead-time, logistics, product-quality, and continuity questions.
Use the same fields for every respondent, define reporting periods, request a fixed number of examples, and separate numbers, dates, choices, narrative explanations, and uploads. Avoid combining several criteria in one long-answer field. A scoring rubric can be maintained by the review team outside the respondent-facing wording.
Ask only for documents your reviewers need at this stage, and name each upload clearly. Examples may include insurance evidence, organizational charts, safety or quality materials, financial or trade references, and product documents. State acceptable formats, relevant dates, and whether an item is required or optional.
Yes. Makeform is unlimited free for generating, editing, publishing, and collecting responses. The paid tier removes the Makeform badge. You can revise the generated questionnaire before sharing it with contractors or suppliers.
You can require essential fields, use conditional follow-ups after disclosures, send submission notifications, and tag or export responses for review. Define your own escalation criteria and have the appropriate procurement, project, safety, financial, or other internal specialists assess the information before shortlisting.
Shortlist on evidence, not scattered attachments.
