How to write a reference list that wins Swiss public tenders

A bid for a Swiss public tender that fails on references rarely fails loudly. The buyer’s evaluation team marks the eligibility section “nicht erfüllt”, the file gets set aside, and the bidder spends weeks waiting for an outcome that was decided in the first hour of the assessment. Of the bids we have read where SMEs were disqualified at the gate, more were stopped by a weak reference list than by price, by missing certificates, or by anything else. Below: how to write one that survives, with a copy-paste template at the end.

Why references decide so much

A Swiss public buyer cannot legally award a tender to a bidder it considers unable to deliver the contract. That is what the eligibility criteria (Eignungskriterien) are for: a gate that filters out under-qualified bidders before the buyer even looks at price. References (past projects with named clients) are the most common form of evidence the buyer asks for, because they are the most concrete.

The post on eligibility vs award criteria covers the gate-vs-weighting distinction in more depth. The relevant point for references is that they are usually gating, not scoring. If the buyer asks for “three references from comparable projects in the last five years” and you provide two, you do not get partial credit. You get rejected.

What buyers actually look at

Buyers read reference entries in roughly this order:

Relevance. Does the reference involve the same scope of work, similar contract value, and a comparable client type? A municipal kitchen renovation is not a credible reference for a hospital kitchen renovation, even though both are kitchens. If the buyer is the canton of Aargau and your reference is from a private builder, you have not demonstrated public-sector capability.

Recency. Most Swiss tenders set a window: “within the last three years”, “within the last five years”. A reference from 2018 is dead for a 2026 tender that asks for the last three years. Order your reference list by recency descending so the buyer sees the freshest evidence first.

Volume. A reference for a CHF 50,000 contract is not a credible reference for a CHF 5 million tender. Buyers will accept references at or near the value of the tender. They will look skeptically at references an order of magnitude smaller. If you do not have a reference at scale, partnering through a Bietergemeinschaft is sometimes the only path to credibility.

Verifiability. Buyers occasionally call the client named in your reference. A reference without a named contact, a phone number, or an email address is half a reference. A reference whose contact has left the named organization is worse than no reference at all. The buyer’s call goes to a voicemail that does not exist.

The five-row reference template

Every public reference entry should answer five questions, in this order:

1. Who was the client? Full legal name of the procuring authority, not a marketing alias. The Bundesamt für Bauten und Logistik, not “BBL”. The Spital Aarau AG, not “Aarau Hospital”.
2. What was the contract? One sentence describing the scope. Avoid “various IT services”. Use “implementation of a SAP S/4HANA payroll module covering 8,000 federal employees”.
3. What was the contract value, currency, and duration? “CHF 2.3 million over 18 months, October 2023 to March 2025”. If you cannot disclose the exact figure (some clients require this), state the order of magnitude: “between CHF 1M and CHF 5M”. Never omit the value field entirely.
4. Who did the work? If your firm acted as a subcontractor, say so. If you led a consortium, name the consortium partners. Public buyers want to know who actually carried the risk.
5. Who can the buyer call? Named contact, current role, direct phone or email. Verify the contact still works there before you submit. The week before a deadline is not the moment to discover your reference contact retired in 2024.

Copy-paste reference rows: one good, one bad

The same project written two ways. Copy the good row into your template.

A reference that earns the eligibility tick:

Client:         Kanton Zürich Hochbauamt, Baubereich D
Contract:       Total renovation of the Hardau community
                centre (heritage-listed, 1962), incl. structural
                steelwork, building envelope and MEP coordination
Value & dates:  CHF 4'850'000 net (excl. VAT), March 2023 to
                November 2024 (21 months, on time, on budget)
Role:           Lead contractor (no subcontracting on charakteristische
                Leistung); Müller AG carried steelwork as Subunternehmer
Reference:      Sandra Bühlmann, Projektleiterin Hochbauamt
                +41 43 259 27 14 / sandra.buehlmann@bd.zh.ch
                (confirmed reachable 12.05.2026)

The same project written so the buyer mentally bins it:

Client:         Kanton Zürich
Contract:       Various construction works
Value & dates:  ~5 million, 2023
Role:           Main contractor
Reference:      Frau Bühlmann from the canton

The first row gives the evaluator enough to verify, classify, and trust the experience. The second forces the evaluator to guess. Public buyers don’t guess in favour of bidders. They mark “Eignung nicht erfüllt” and move on.

Three traps to avoid

Padding the list. Buyers asking for three references want three good ones, not eight average ones. A long list dilutes the strong references and signals that you are uncertain about each one. Submit the strongest three (or however many the tender asks for, plus at most one in reserve).

Reusing references mechanically. A reference that won you a construction contract is not automatically useful for an IT one. Adapt the one-sentence scope description so the relevance to this tender is visible without the evaluator having to infer it.

Treating references as static. A reference list is a living document. Each new finished contract should immediately be added; each retired contact should be replaced before the next tender goes out. SMEs that do this systematically save themselves the 48-hour scramble before every deadline.

Where TenderLift fits

Our fit-scoring feature reads your past awards and projects, parses each new Swiss tender’s eligibility section, and tells you whether your reference portfolio actually matches what the buyer is asking for. If the answer is no, you find out in the first five minutes, not after a week of bid-writing. See how fit-scoring works on a tender you have been eyeing.