Run the EcoVadis questionnaire as a scored bid

What your answers earn on the EcoVadis scorecard depends on the existing documents you attach to each activated criterion, not on how well the answers read: EcoVadis's questionnaire guide says attached documents are the only evidence its analysts consider during the assessment phase. When you need to start depends on the date your customers need the new scorecard, because results take weeks to publish after you submit. That makes it a scored submission with a published marking scheme, and it runs best as one, in six stages: set the timeline, map the criteria, name the owners, choose the documents, reconcile the figures and plan the reassessment.

Who runs it and what you need before starting

The bid or proposal manager runs the questionnaire with the sustainability lead, because it has everything a scored submission has: a deadline, a marking scheme, evidence scattered across the business and one person who answers for what goes out. The sustainability lead knows the programme. HR, legal, operations and the team that manages your own suppliers hold most of the documents. The bid manager owns the plan, the evidence set and the final sign-off.

Gather four inputs before the questionnaire opens:

• the date each customer needs your next scorecard
• your previous scorecard and its improvement areas, if you've been assessed before
• your latest CDP response, if you submit one
• the ESG answers in your bid library that customers have already received

The last two matter more than they look. Customers who hold your scorecard may also hold your CDP response and your bid answers, so the questionnaire is never answered in isolation. If EcoVadis is one of many questionnaires your team answers, how to run every questionnaire response places it among the rest, and the ESG questionnaire entry covers the wider category it belongs to.

Work back from the date your customers need the scorecard

Set your latest submission date from your customer's date minus publication time, not from the deadline EcoVadis gives you. The two clocks run separately. A scorecard stays valid for 12 months from publication, after which new sharing requests from customers trigger a reassessment; customers can send that request up to 3 months before your current scorecard expires.

The platform runs its own clock. The default deadline is 30 business days, and EcoVadis notes that completing the questionnaire can take from a few hours to a few days if the documents are ready. In most cases, you can extend the deadline yourself by up to 60 business days in total, as long as you do it before the deadline passes. After you submit, publication typically takes 6 to 8 weeks, and it can be shorter or longer depending on the company's profile.

That last figure sets your date. Every business day you use on the platform, extensions included, pushes publication later. The deadline the platform shows is the latest you're allowed to submit, not the latest your customer can wait.

A worked example of the back-plan

This is an illustration, using only the timings above. Say a customer needs your new scorecard by the day the current one expires and sends its request as early as it can.

1. Three months before expiry, roughly 13 weeks: the request arrives.
2. Eight weeks before expiry: your latest submission date, allowing for the top of the typical publication range.
3. Between the two: about 5 weeks, roughly 25 business days.

That is less than the 30-business-day default deadline, so the deadline the platform shows can fall after your real one, and an extension only pushes it further out. Because the questionnaire is quick once you have the evidence, the work that decides whether you make the date happens before the request arrives: criteria mapped, owners named, documents checked. A later request shrinks the window by the same amount, so agree the request date with the customer as early as you agree anything else.

Map the activated criteria to policies, actions and results

Shred the questionnaire into a matrix with one row per activated criterion, then mark the policy, action and result evidence you hold for each. EcoVadis says the length of your questionnaire depends mainly on the number of activated criteria - the key sustainability issues it identifies for your company - within its four themes: environment, labour and human rights, ethics and sustainable procurement. Those criteria are what you're marked on, so they're the rows.

The columns come from the scoring. EcoVadis's methodology measures the quality of a sustainability management system through three pillars - policies, actions and results - split into seven management indicators. A criterion backed only by a policy has evidence for one pillar and two empty columns. That's the most useful thing the matrix shows you: a commitment on paper with nothing to show it's been carried out or measured.

For each row, record:

• the activated criterion and its theme
• the policy that covers it
• the action that puts the policy into practice, such as a procedure or a training record
• the result that measures it, such as a KPI report
• the owner of each document
• the questionnaire option each document will be attached to

Mark every gap now, and don't plan to close one by drafting a document for the occasion. Some gaps close with a document that already exists somewhere you haven't looked. The rest belong in the reassessment plan.

Give every theme and document a named owner

Name one owner for each theme, chosen because their function holds its evidence, and one owner for each document. A theme owner gives the bid manager one person to chase for that theme's gaps. A document owner is responsible for keeping the file current, complete and the right version.

Match each theme to the function that holds its evidence: labour and human rights to HR, ethics to legal, environment to operations or the sustainability lead. Sustainable procurement is the theme without an obvious home, because its evidence spans the team that manages your own suppliers, legal for contract clauses, and operations. Assign it to whoever can pull documents from all three, and make the others document owners under them.

EcoVadis also suggests creating user accounts for colleagues so they can help answer questions and upload documents. Use that for your owners, so each one uploads their own files against the options in the matrix and you can see at a glance what's still missing.

Brief owners as you'd brief any subject matter expert: name the criterion, the pillar, the kind of document you need and the date you need it. Ask for documents that already exist, never new ones. Working with subject matter experts on tenders covers getting evidence from people with other priorities. The bid manager owns sign-off: owners supply evidence, and one person decides what to submit.

Choose the documents analysts will credit

Choose each document for the criterion and pillar it proves, because with only attachments counting, the evidence set is the submission. EcoVadis also caps it.

Decide what fills the 55 slots

EcoVadis allows a company at most 55 supporting documents per assessment, and only relevant documents referenced against the right questions help. Let the matrix decide the slots. Start with documents that fill an empty pillar on an activated criterion, then those that cover several criteria at once, and leave out anything that supports nothing you're marked on. A document attached to the wrong option uses a slot and proves nothing.

Validity narrows the choice further. EcoVadis applies a validity period of 8 years to policies and actions, and 2 years to KPI reporting. An older KPI report won't count, no matter how good its figures, so the results column is the one that needs replacing soonest between assessments.

Check each file before upload

Check every file against four tests before it goes in:

• It existed before the assessment: EcoVadis does not accept documents created solely for the assessment, and requires documents to be authentic and pre-existing.
• It's complete: the whole document, not an extract or a cover page.
• It's within its validity period.
• It's machine-readable: documents must be machine-readable to be fully considered, and scans, screenshots and handwriting may not be read.

When you're unsure whether a specific file will count, the EcoVadis Document Guide, updated on 6 October 2026, gives valid and invalid examples, tips for working within the 55-document limit and a section for companies being reassessed. Keeping each document's owner and review date between assessments stops this check from turning into a hunt every year; building an auditable evidence library covers how.

In SEQUESTO: each evidence document in the Knowledge Hub, part of SEQUESTO aOS, keeps its owner, review cycle and expiry date, so a KPI report past its expiry date is flagged before it reaches a draft.

Check every figure against your CDP and bid answers

Reconcile every figure before you submit, so the same value, period and entity scope appear in your EcoVadis documents, your CDP response and the ESG answers in your bid library. A customer who holds your scorecard and your bid response can compare them. A mismatch raises a question that's far easier to fix before submission than to explain after it.

Where the two evidence models differ

The two schemes credit evidence in opposite places. CDP scores a response only on the data in the response itself, and excludes external links and attachments unless its methodology says otherwise. In the assessment phase, EcoVadis analysts consider only the attached document. So a figure you report to both needs two forms: a statement that stands on its own in the CDP response, and an attached document in EcoVadis showing the same value. Write the CDP statement from the document, never from memory, and the two can't drift apart.

Build a figure register

Keep one register of every figure that appears in more than one place, with these columns:

• the figure and its value
• the unit
• the reporting period
• the entity scope: group, subsidiary or site
• the source document and its owner
• every place it appears: the EcoVadis option, the CDP question, the bid library answer

Check each EcoVadis document against the register before upload, and update the register first whenever a figure changes. Read the period and scope columns slowly. A group figure for one year and a site figure for another can both be correct and still look like a contradiction to a customer. Answering once and reusing across deals depends on a register like this.

In SEQUESTO: your team keeps sustainability data points in one library with version history, and when an owner updates a figure, every answer that used it is flagged.

Plan the reassessment from the improvement areas

Turn each improvement area on your scorecard into a dated action with an owner, because the next assessment is when your own evidence can move the score. The scorecard names strengths and improvement areas for each theme, and EcoVadis gives each improvement area a suggested priority level. Start with the highest-priority areas on activated criteria, and work each one back from your next latest submission date.

A Corrective Action Plan won't help in the meantime: EcoVadis states that it doesn't consider Corrective Action Plans in scoring. What closes an improvement area is what earns credit the first time - a real policy, action or result, documented before you submit.

That's why the plan has to start early. A document written for the assessment won't count, so a new policy needs time to be adopted, a new action needs time to run, and a new KPI needs time to produce a reporting period. Give each one a date well before the questionnaire opens, and read the Document Guide's reassessment section before you upload.

Don't count on last year's answers to carry the work. At reassessment, some answers, about 20 to 50 per cent, are pre-filled from the previous assessment, but new or modified questions and performance metrics are generally not. Your KPI owners should expect to supply fresh figures, and the figure register should be updated before they do.

EcoVadis questionnaire checklist

• The latest submission date sits at least 8 weeks before the earliest date a customer needs the new scorecard, and the documents are ready before the request arrives.
• Every activated criterion is in the matrix with its policy, action and result evidence marked, and every gap is named.
• Each theme and each document has a named owner with an EcoVadis account, and the bid manager holds sign-off.
• Every file existed before the assessment, is complete, machine-readable and within its validity period, and the total is no more than 55.
• Every figure matches the register for value, unit, period and entity scope, and every CDP statement stands without an attachment.
• Every improvement area has an owner, a priority and a dated document due before the next latest submission date.

Start with the first line: find out when each customer needs your next scorecard, and count back.