Requesting a copy of winning tender documents (FOI)

[Tuvra]

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

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

[Tuvra]

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

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

[Tuvra]

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