Well written bids, from our perspective

As a furniture dealership, we receive many bids at our offices. They come in all sizes and shapes. Some are easier to respond to than others, from our perspective, and I wanted to share some best practices with this audience.

One recent bid was short, concise and filled with questions relevant to their needs. Instead of a normal section about gauge of steel and how many ball bearings does your drawer suspension have, this bid asked manufacturing questions like this:
1. Please identify any and all components of this product that are manufactured by a third party, and please describe your relationship with this third party. We interpreted this as a way to find out if the content of the product is coming from Asian suppliers or any other off shore suppliers that use harmful chemicals or other undesirable things in the manufacturing process. It allowed us to talk about how the product is made, where it is made etc.

The same bid had great questions about the environment. First off, the section was called "Environmental Health & Safety" - nice heading.
1. Please state the percent of recycled goods that are in the product as well as the degree which this product is itself recyclable.
2. Is this product Green Guard certified?
3. Is the final assembly of this product less than 500 miles from the project site? Please identify the assembly location.
Straightforward, relevant to LEED and open ended so we can answer and add information as needed.

There are a zillion ways to ask for information and then of course, there are a zillion ways to respond - this one worked for us.