REAL STORIES SHARED BY OUR READERS
* Names have been changed
Lost bid blame game all started over the non-compliance and subsequent disqualification of the bid submission.
A major contractor has been shamefully disqualified from a major public sector works program for allegedly failing to correctly complete a mandatory Schedule to their $20M bid.
An inside source from the company shared the news to colleagues at a local bar upon her return from the client debrief. According to one of the colleagues, despite the company’s bid being highly competitive, under evaluation rules a key piece of documentation hadn’t been properly filled in, deeming the entire Offer to be non-compliant.
“We drank a few jugs to unpack what happened and learned that key instructions for a Compliance Matrix had been majorly misinterpreted. Later, we returned to the office to kick on and raid the boardroom bar and do some group meditation to calm down and fight the urge to break things,” the source revealed.
“Of the one million emails and attachments that circulated in the RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: email trail and group conversation threads, it was discovered that the fateful Addendum 3 instructions were missed. What are the chances of that happening?” she continued.
“Upon further enquiry it was revealed that the evaluation team clarified in Addendum 3 that they wanted a TLDR (Too Long Didn’t Read) version of the Offer that succinctly addressed all the requirements, but our team had thought they’d done the right thing by laying our matrix out in Shipley style and cross-referenced where the answer could be located in the Offer. Like way-finding for the lazy reader.”
Questions over who was to blame for the oversight has led to a full internal investigation of email file name conventions.
“We’re considering lodging a formal grievance because we don’t believe the award decision was fair. Disqualification and throwing our bid over the wall on the grounds of a technicality is quite frankly, mean. And when the sink hole appears, you coulda shoulda woulda awarded our company that contract.”