Requesting a copy of winning tender documents (FOI)

Requesting a copy of winning tender documents (FOI)

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Tuvra

Original Poster:

7,920 posts

224 months

Tuesday 21st February 2017
quotequote all
Morning Guys, I will cut a very long story short......

I have recently spent a lot of time with another contractor putting together a tender for a large project. The tender we created was in my eyes very good however it fell a long way short of the winning tender. We finished 4th out of the 12 companies that tendered, however if we would have been more competitive on price we probably would have been up into second, we would have still finished some way behind 1st because of their "quality scoring".

I basically want to see the winning documents to see what additional information this company has provided to warrant the hike in the quality scoring. Are you able to use the Freedom of Information Act to request such documents? An informal email has been rejected by the buyer but I have reason to believe they are protecting themselves*

*I have since been told that the buyers staff often help certain companies in submitting documents, make of that what you will

I don't see a problem with the information being released? I wouldn't be bothered if I was the winning tenderer confused

On a similar note, a very large contract has been undertaken locally in my line of work and I have never seen any advertisements in relation to putting the project out to tender? This work has been undertaken by the buyers "go to" contractor and I would like to know how they came to this decision to use them and more importantly why it was never advertised?

These are both Local Authorities BTW.

Thoughts and opinions appreciated smile

flatsix3.6

756 posts

180 months

Tuesday 21st February 2017
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LA's are strange things to figure out, I once put in a tender for some work but they awarded it to their own works dept and in the local paper it said it had been awarded on best value, it was nearly double my price.

ninja-lewis

4,226 posts

189 months

Tuesday 21st February 2017
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Likely to be refused on Commercial Interest grounds.

Read up here - https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/documen...

robemcdonald

8,716 posts

195 months

Tuesday 21st February 2017
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flatsix3.6 said:
LA's are strange things to figure out, I once put in a tender for some work but they awarded it to their own works dept and in the local paper it said it had been awarded on best value, it was nearly double my price.
It probably was the best value though. If they had awarded you the contract then they would still have to pay the salaries of their own works department staff.

robemcdonald

8,716 posts

195 months

Tuesday 21st February 2017
quotequote all
DELETED: Comment made by a member who's account has been deleted.
Is that really true? Maybe 30 years ago, but not these days.

Countdown

39,690 posts

195 months

Tuesday 21st February 2017
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DELETED: Comment made by a member who's account has been deleted.
How do you know there was a brand new motorbike AND it was purchased for him by a corrupt IT contractor?

You should have reported him/them. When I worked in audit one of my "favourite" fraud cases was when one corrupt contractor grassed up another corrupt contractor for bribing the BOSS of the manager he had bribed. That department was a veritable Augean stables. It all came about because both of the managers were trying to impress the new office totty...

Countdown

39,690 posts

195 months

Tuesday 21st February 2017
quotequote all
Tuvra said:
Morning Guys, I will cut a very long story short......

On a similar note, a very large contract has been undertaken locally in my line of work and I have never seen any advertisements in relation to putting the project out to tender? This work has been undertaken by the buyers "go to" contractor and I would like to know how they came to this decision to use them and more importantly why it was never advertised?

These are both Local Authorities BTW.

Thoughts and opinions appreciated smile
The "Go to" Contractor is probably on the Approved Supplier List. They will have a pre-agreed schedule of rates/prices that the LA can use to avoid having to get quotes for every job.

Amateurish

7,697 posts

221 months

Tuesday 21st February 2017
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DELETED: Comment made by a member who's account has been deleted.
I used to open tenders for a local authority - making sure everything was above board. Never so much as a cheeky fiver in the envelopes. Shame.

Tenders we scored against a pre agreed matrix then we'd all sign off on the results. It would have been extremely difficult to sway the decision by bribing one of the staff.

Downward

3,489 posts

102 months

Tuesday 21st February 2017
quotequote all
Tuvra said:
Morning Guys, I will cut a very long story short......

I have recently spent a lot of time with another contractor putting together a tender for a large project. The tender we created was in my eyes very good however it fell a long way short of the winning tender. We finished 4th out of the 12 companies that tendered, however if we would have been more competitive on price we probably would have been up into second, we would have still finished some way behind 1st because of their "quality scoring".

I basically want to see the winning documents to see what additional information this company has provided to warrant the hike in the quality scoring. Are you able to use the Freedom of Information Act to request such documents? An informal email has been rejected by the buyer but I have reason to believe they are protecting themselves*

*I have since been told that the buyers staff often help certain companies in submitting documents, make of that what you will

I don't see a problem with the information being released? I wouldn't be bothered if I was the winning tenderer confused

On a similar note, a very large contract has been undertaken locally in my line of work and I have never seen any advertisements in relation to putting the project out to tender? This work has been undertaken by the buyers "go to" contractor and I would like to know how they came to this decision to use them and more importantly why it was never advertised?

These are both Local Authorities BTW.

Thoughts and opinions appreciated smile
You need to ask for a debrief.
They will have scored your bid based on the weightings, they should have given you the score you achieved against the winning bid.

They should also have comments on each of the questions from each bidder so that will give you an idea of where your bid fell short.

I have never been asked to disclose a winning bid as the scoring you provide to all bidders for the award and non award should have enough information and justification in them.

StevieBee

12,795 posts

254 months

Wednesday 22nd February 2017
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Welcome to my world!

Firstly; on the FoI request. The tender will have allowed all companies to request the withholding of what they consider to be commercially sensitive information. It is most likely that the detail that gave the winning company the contract will be amongst the information withheld so having sight of the tender will unlikely yield any insight as to why they won and you didn't.

You are entitled to detailed feedback and a formal request to the procuring authority has to be answered within the stated 'purdah' period and if you feel that the decision is unjust, then you can request that an independent assessment of the applications is made.

Secondly; the company you referred to as being awarded a contract with no apparent tender being issued was most likely awarded under a framework agreement. At some time in the past, companies would have been invited to tender for a position on a 'call-off' framework so that as and when projects arise, either they are selected from the framework or the authority simply requests quotes from three companies on that framework.

Or you simply didn't see the tender notice when it was published. You can't spot them all!


Tuvra

Original Poster:

7,920 posts

224 months

Wednesday 22nd February 2017
quotequote all
Countdown said:
The "Go to" Contractor is probably on the Approved Supplier List. They will have a pre-agreed schedule of rates/prices that the LA can use to avoid having to get quotes for every job.
Thanks for that, I probably should have mentioned that I am also on the approved contractors list. Bit of a shambles that considering I have been offered two jobs in three years while the other contractor is employing 20 people permanently engaged on LA Projects banghead
robemcdonald said:
Is that really true? Maybe 30 years ago, but not these days.
Unfortunately, in this sector its still rampant.
Downward said:
You need to ask for a debrief.
They will have scored your bid based on the weightings, they should have given you the score you achieved against the winning bid.

They should also have comments on each of the questions from each bidder so that will give you an idea of where your bid fell short.

I have never been asked to disclose a winning bid as the scoring you provide to all bidders for the award and non award should have enough information and justification in them.
I have already asked for this but to be honest, it is nowhere near detailed enough, for example one of the scoring questions where I lost 1.6% (bearing in mind I lost the quality section work by approx 9%) gave feedback as follows:-

How will you ensure that the security of the site is well maintained throughout the whole process of the works mitigating any aspect of anti-social behaviour?
Answer lacked detail, concerns around a watchman/team member as night security.

I discussed this question/feedback with my sub contractor who works for a large multi national and he confirmed that he didn't see what else I could have put to add real value to the question and the feedback reveals nothing. (In regards to using a watchman, I basically stated that if certain sites were getting heavily vandalised, there was provisions to appoint a night watchman, something which is standard practice)

I do lots of tenders, this one smells very fishy though unfortunately frown

iphonedyou

9,234 posts

156 months

Wednesday 22nd February 2017
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DELETED: Comment made by a member who's account has been deleted.
As a Chartered Surveyor that's procured everything from trains to social housing via education facilities for the public sectors, rest assured it's virtually never the case. They do plenty wrong (including not listening to people like me as much as they should) but corruption like you've described is very, very rarely it.

As above, the FoI request will be rejected on commercial interest grounds. The 'missed' opportunity was probably awarded to a framework Operator - keep an eye out for the next framework renewal.

You should have been given enough information to work out where you fell down - your own scores and comments, together with the overall score of the successful tenderer and the relative merits of their response - but there's no obligation to detail out the successful tenderer's scores and assessment comments. Good practice though.

Edited by iphonedyou on Wednesday 22 February 10:20

iphonedyou

9,234 posts

156 months

Wednesday 22nd February 2017
quotequote all
Tuvra said:
I have already asked for this but to be honest, it is nowhere near detailed enough, for example one of the scoring questions where I lost 1.6% (bearing in mind I lost the quality section work by approx 9%) gave feedback as follows:-

How will you ensure that the security of the site is well maintained throughout the whole process of the works mitigating any aspect of anti-social behaviour?
Answer lacked detail, concerns around a watchman/team member as night security.

I discussed this question/feedback with my sub contractor who works for a large multi national and he confirmed that he didn't see what else I could have put to add real value to the question and the feedback reveals nothing. (In regards to using a watchman, I basically stated that if certain sites were getting heavily vandalised, there was provisions to appoint a night watchman, something which is standard practice)

I do lots of tenders, this one smells very fishy though unfortunately frown
It won't be fishy, per se.

Unfortunately, those assessing are terrified - as in, keeps-them-up-at-night - terrified of receiving a challenge during standstill. This means three things.

There will be an individual assessment, followed by a moderation session during which scores will trend towards a generally high mean. This avoids having to fail anybody on the pass / fail questions.

They won't use logarithmic scoring to differentiate in order that most tenders will receive scores fairly close to each other. This avoids any tenderers throwing a total wobbler for being miles off the pace.

Finally, they deliberately use feedback comments so vague and non-committal as to be utterly useless - for fear that tenderers, in receiving genuine, useful feedback they can utilise in their next submission, will see something they don't like and raise a challenge.

With all respect to your multi-national sub-contractor; it matters not what he thinks, rather what's on the marking scheme. Which will also offer plenty of scope for vague marking, as you've found.

Tuvra

Original Poster:

7,920 posts

224 months

Wednesday 22nd February 2017
quotequote all
iphonedyou said:
It won't be fishy, per se.

Unfortunately, those assessing are terrified - as in, keeps-them-up-at-night - terrified of receiving a challenge during standstill. This means three things.

There will be an individual assessment, followed by a moderation session during which scores will trend towards a generally high mean. This avoids having to fail anybody on the pass / fail questions.

They won't use logarithmic scoring to differentiate in order that most tenders will receive scores fairly close to each other. This avoids any tenderers throwing a total wobbler for being miles off the pace.

Finally, they deliberately use feedback comments so vague and non-committal as to be utterly useless - for fear that tenderers, in receiving genuine, useful feedback they can utilise in their next submission, will see something they don't like and raise a challenge.

With all respect to your multi-national sub-contractor; it matters not what he thinks, rather what's on the marking scheme. Which will also offer plenty of scope for vague marking, as you've found.
I know you state that the feedback is deliberately scarce. However, in this instance, where I have got close to the winning tender, they gave me more detailed feedback. Where the winning tenderer blitzed me (e.g. 5 v 2 in scoring) I get one liners like above. I mentioned my multi national sub contractor because he has vast experience in submitting tenders. Therefore two experienced people answering a question could only get a combined score of 40% versus the winning tenders 100%, I'm sorry but I don't believe for one second that the winning tender could have genuinely submitted a 60% more detailed answer. IMO to only get 40% you have missed numerous key points which should have been mentioned in the feedback, their failure to do so makes me question the whole thing.

As I say, I have lost lots of tenders but this one has really irritated me frown

Sheepshanks

32,528 posts

118 months

Wednesday 22nd February 2017
quotequote all
robemcdonald said:
Is that really true? Maybe 30 years ago, but not these days.
DELETED: Comment made by a member who's account has been deleted.
I'm disgusted that you didn't report it - I'd be amazed if you're not committing an offence yourself.

iphonedyou

9,234 posts

156 months

Wednesday 22nd February 2017
quotequote all
Tuvra said:
I know you state that the feedback is deliberately scarce. However, in this instance, where I have got close to the winning tender, they gave me more detailed feedback. Where the winning tenderer blitzed me (e.g. 5 v 2 in scoring) I get one liners like above. I mentioned my multi national sub contractor because he has vast experience in submitting tenders. Therefore two experienced people answering a question could only get a combined score of 40% versus the winning tenders 100%, I'm sorry but I don't believe for one second that the winning tender could have genuinely submitted a 60% more detailed answer. IMO to only get 40% you have missed numerous key points which should have been mentioned in the feedback, their failure to do so makes me question the whole thing.

As I say, I have lost lots of tenders but this one has really irritated me frown
I understand your frustration. Have you considered raising a challenge?

andy-xr

13,204 posts

203 months

Wednesday 22nd February 2017
quotequote all
Who wrote the tender?

I only ask as back in the days of being in a vendor I've seen tenders come through with specific vendors marketing terms on the 'Must Haves' so you kind of know it's been written with a particular 'We're going to buy this, who wants to sell it to us' slant.

I stopped replying to tenders after the fourth or fifth time of it happening and started asking who was in so early at the pre-tender stage to influence the outcome.

StevieBee

12,795 posts

254 months

Wednesday 22nd February 2017
quotequote all
Tuvra said:
I know you state that the feedback is deliberately scarce. However, in this instance, where I have got close to the winning tender, they gave me more detailed feedback. Where the winning tenderer blitzed me (e.g. 5 v 2 in scoring) I get one liners like above. I mentioned my multi national sub contractor because he has vast experience in submitting tenders. Therefore two experienced people answering a question could only get a combined score of 40% versus the winning tenders 100%, I'm sorry but I don't believe for one second that the winning tender could have genuinely submitted a 60% more detailed answer. IMO to only get 40% you have missed numerous key points which should have been mentioned in the feedback, their failure to do so makes me question the whole thing.

As I say, I have lost lots of tenders but this one has really irritated me frown
I do share your pain.

We lost a really nice bit of business last year by 0.5% on the scoring. One of the reasonings they gave demonstrated to me (at the time) that they had misinterpreted part of our methodology (on the project schedule, we marked out a two week period during which training would take place - they appeared to have read that as training would 'take' two weeks when only a day would have been needed). I called it on both this basis and the fact that on such a tight score margin, they should revert for clarification. When the reverted with their reasoning, I looked again at our bid and as much as it pained me to say, I had to admit that they were right. I would have concluded the same were I on the other side.



StevieBee

12,795 posts

254 months

Wednesday 22nd February 2017
quotequote all
swerni said:
I've worked for vendors most of my life.
If you haven't been influential, fed into the tender or have a prior relationship with an organisation, conventional wisdom says to no bid.

We all know cases where an outsider has won, but they are by far the exception.
I think this has and is changing rapidly. Thinking back over the past year, all but one of our major contracts were won 'blind' with no prior client contact or past relationship.

briang9

3,260 posts

159 months

Wednesday 22nd February 2017
quotequote all
robemcdonald said:
flatsix3.6 said:
LA's are strange things to figure out, I once put in a tender for some work but they awarded it to their own works dept and in the local paper it said it had been awarded on best value, it was nearly double my price.
It probably was the best value though. If they had awarded you the contract then they would still have to pay the salaries of their own works department staff.
Best value does not always mean cheapest