Once you have decided to have a go at a Request for Tender or Request for Proposal, you would want your bids to stand out, or at least be considered. The fact is, often bids fall short of making the first cut, or the second cut.
Tendering is a competitive process and your bid at the very least needs to meet the minimum requirement for it to be considererd. You don’t want to give the assessors reasons to eliminate your bid from the evaluation process.
There are many reasons for this, but I have outlined some of the more common ones that will sideline your bids, particularly when you are bidding for government tenders.
Get the Tender in on Time
If you don’t get your Tender in on time, it will be disqualified. On some occasions, such as Expressions of Interest (EOI), it may be considered if theTender is a few minutes late.
Government Departments and Councils cannot give an unfair advantage to any person or company.
With the electronic tendering system, late tenders are not accepted at all. The Tenderer will not be able to submit the Tender. Often, in this case, the Tenderer will blame the technology.
Common mistakes are when the Tenderers do not realise that they are in different time zones
Tender Forms are Not Signed
In large Request for Tenders and even small proposal of below $100,000, there is often a number of signatures are required. Unsigned Tenders are considered Non-Conforming.
This can happen as an oversight, or the Tenderer does not believe that it is important.
In my experience, very few times I have seen Council Officers go back to the Tenderer as a clarification to get the forms signed. If the competition is high and there are several Tenders vying to win the Tender, then Council can put the Tender in the Non-conforming pile.
There are too many Departures
What does this mean – Departures are the items of the service or Conditions of the Contract that the Tenderer is not prepared to perform or may want to depart from, hence the term “departures”.
The Tenderer usually provides the Tendered Price and departures in the sense that they outline a list of Council’s conditions they are not prepared to accept. When the departures are minor, like payment terms or the date by which the Contractor needs to provide something, then it would be acceptable, however when the Tenderer is passing the risk back to Council, then it becomes unacceptable to Council to accept their Tender.
Too many departures where the risk is passed back to Council dilutes the whole reason Council undertaking the work using a Contractor, they might as well do the work themself. This also makes it difficult for Council to evaluate Tender.
There are a lot more to “Departures” that I can’t include here, but it often gets Tenderers undone.
There is Evidence of Collusion
So, what is “Collusion”? Collusion in Tendering refers to when two or more competitors cooperate to undermine the competitive Tender process in order to gain an unfair advantage.
Often large Request for Tender Documents will have Collusive TenderingDeclaration. This is where the Tenderer declares that they have not entered into collusive behaviour.
If the Tenderers collude in any way and there is evidence of collusion, then the Tender from both Tenderers will be considered Non-conforming.
Tender Submission is Incomplete
This goes without saying, if your Tender is incomplete, then your Tender would be considered Non-conforming.
Often if there is minor information missing, this can be clarified during the Tender through the clarification process. If the Tender is blatantly missing information, for example, incomplete schedules, then the Council will consider the Tender to be Non-conforming.
Contradictory Information
If a Tenderer provides contradictory information that cannot be verified, then their Tender may be considered to be Non-conforming.
I have seen some very prominent companies Tendering or sending in Consulting Proposal that are significantly flawed in this area. The good old“copy and paste” gets them in trouble. The common mistake I find is the use of other Councils’ names that they have not updated. Imagine Council ABC receives a Tender that refers to Council XYZ. Not a good look.
“Copy and Paste” is one of the best things invented, but the Tenderers need to be diligent in making sure that they only copy and paste the stuff they need