This article is an excerpt from The Art of Tendering: A Global Due Diligence Guide, which is available for purchase.
In its February 1982 decision in Data Specialities Mart v. Florida Department of General Services, the Florida Division of Administrative Hearings upheld the Florida Department of General Services’ decision to reject a bid as non-compliant. The case dealt with an Invitation to Bid (ITB) for a data processing card contract. The solicitation required that bidders have an operational card processing facility at the time of the bid submission deadline. The Court found that the complainant’s bid was properly rejected for failing to meet that requirement:
Petitioner’s president, who signed the letter, believed he would acquire the facility at a November 16, 1981, bankruptcy proceeding and thus claimed the facility for bid purposes. Although Petitioner did acquire the factory as anticipated, it possessed no manufacturing capability on the bid opening date…[T]he above provisions require that a printing contract bidder, to qualify, must possess the capability of manufacturing the contract commodity. This capability is established as a condition precedent to bidding. Since bids were opened on November 10, 1981, Petitioner was required to be a qualified bidder as of that date. Respondent, in carrying out its responsibility to investigate bidder manufacturing capability, correctly determined that Petitioner did not possess the manufacturing capability it claimed on the bid opening date and was therefore not qualified.
As this case illustrates, when compliance standards are attached to the bid deadline, those bids that fail to meet those standards are non-compliant and legally incapable of acceptance. Purchasing institutions should therefore be careful to define whether requirements must be met at the bid deadline, during later evaluation stages, or subsequently during contract performance.
