Hi Chef,
I have been very successful in National competitions here in the UK. I now teach at a hotel school in Birmingham England.
I am at present writing my dissertation on the failings of the judging system in competitions and how they are open to abuse.
If you know of any guidelines or successful criteria used by organisations that can help or any bad experiences that you may have suffered or good suggestions I would be very grateful of your feed back and comments

I have seen competitions where different judges marked different competitiors. Judges varied in their toughness which led to, as you put it a failing of the system. We have had sucess when running competitions by having one set of judges judge process - in the lab. A second set of judges marked the finished products, which were not marked with names, just letters. Good luck.