RESOLV Intelligence / Engineering

12 July 2026 / 6 min read

Before selecting a solar EPC: seven questions procurement teams should ask

The cheapest compliant tender is rarely the cheapest project. These are the questions that separate a contractor from an engineering partner.

Procurement teams are usually handed a scope and asked to obtain three comparable prices. Solar projects resist that treatment, because the price is determined by decisions made long before the tender documents were written.

• /Who signs the design? Is there a named engineer accountable for the electrical design, or is the design assembled by the installation crew on site?
• /How was the yield figure produced, and what assumptions sit behind it? Ask to see them and ask who is accountable if the plant does not reach them.
• /What exactly is excluded from the price? Interconnection, protection upgrades, structural strengthening and utility approvals are the usual omissions.
• /What happens after handover? Is there a defined review process, a monitoring platform, and a response commitment?
• /Who owns the spares strategy? A plant with no defined spares list will be down for months waiting on a component.
• /Has this team delivered the same architecture before, at a comparable size, on a site with comparable constraints?
• /Is the completion test defined in measurable terms, and is there a retention against it?

Why the answers matter more than the price

A solar array is a twenty-five year asset with a two-year warranty period and a five-year attention span. The contractor's approach to documentation, commissioning records and post-handover performance decides whether the asset performs in year eight. Those capabilities are visible in the tender response if procurement asks for them, and they are invisible if procurement only asks for a price.

Ask who is accountable for the design, then ask what happens when the plant underperforms. The distance between the two answers tells you what you are buying.