(04 Jun 2014, 4:21 pm)Dan wrote Out of interest, do you know if this differs in London?
Source: http://sti-india-uttoolkit.adb.org/mod3/se3/005_2.html
Judging by the above quote, the lowest cost bid is not always selected by TfL.
No idea, but presuming Tfl follow EU legislation, it will fall under the MEAT evaluation.
There is mention of it in that link I gave you earlier, but in summary:
Most economically advantageous tender (MEAT) approach
A balance between quality and cost
Once an authority has determined that it is appropriate to use the MEAT approach to evaluate the tenders for its procurement, it needs to decide the weighting split between quality and price (or cost). In a MEAT evaluation, the quality and price scores are converted into percentages in accordance with the pre-set weightings to create a combined score that should identify the successful bidder.