I recently found a web site offering up government and local council tenders, wonderful idea, apparently all institutions needs to offer any work over £25,000 to anyone who wants to tender for it. Apparently there's lots of work out there, mostly stuff that's priced around 10x more than it's actually worth, really juicy work .. one might think.

There is however a catch.

It seems that although they 'have' to offer up all work to Tender, who they pick to do that work is then down to the individuals responsible for specifying the jobs. The people specifying the jobs get to supply as much detail as they want, hence it's possibly to issue a specification that only one company / product can service.

Smelling a rat yet?

There I am, all innocent sending off an application in triplicate (written, email and verbal) , sat there waiting with baited breath thinking that we're in with a chance of obtaining a nice chunk of work. Hah! The response - "we don't think your company is suitable".

Hang on, the initial round was simply requesting companies express an interest in servicing the bid, there really wasn't enough information on the reply to solicit an "unsuitable" response.

Final destination

A quick phone call yielded a "we're looking for an off-the-shelf package", possibly a slip of the tongue as nothing in the specification indicated that the potential vendor already had to have written the software. Also followed by a "don't have time to wait for software to be developed" , along with a far more detailed specification - which was strangely missing from the initial request for Tender.

Could it be they already picked a product and vendor, but were "required" to issue a request for Tender? In this particular instance, with the facts that I have, I'm convinced that this particular instance was a case of "we have to have 'that' software, but we have to offer it for tender 'cos those are the rules".

Stupidity

So how stupid a system is that! First you make the department who needs to make a purchase go through a tendering process, then you waste the time of other companies who are trying to bid for a contract they can never win!

Bureaucracy at it's worst?

No, but bloody annoying. Checks and Balances, anything to stop contracts being awarded to Golf buddies in the same way? Well, I'm sort of under the impression that this is what the rules were designed to protect against. It seems that all they've succeeded in doing it removing the audit function once contracts have been awarded .. unless there's an audit function that remains hidden somewhere.

I'm making enquiries, we shall see .. in the meantime you'll find me down at the Golf school ...