Nine minutes late for billion dollar contract
While it must no doubt be a downer for the firms involved, I couldn't help but smile when reading an article on The Nation's website. A renowned construction consortium may miss a contract of around 290 billion baht because the bid was submitted 9 minutes late.
You can read the whole story at www.nationthailand.com/business/30375160
What is it about?
It concerned a bid for the development projects U-Tapao Airport and Eastern Aviation City with a total value of 290 billion baht. The tender from the relevant construction consortium was not formally accepted by a selection committee appointed by project owner Royal Thai Navy (RTN) because the deadline had been exceeded by nine minutes.
The consortium filed a complaint with the Central Administrative Court defending that the nine-minute delay was caused by traffic congestion on the way to the office where the documents were to be submitted. However, the court rejected the complaint, but the consortium may still be able to participate after an appeal. We will see!
Why that delay?
You may find it nonsense that the offer is no longer accepted nine minutes after the deadline, but from a purely business point of view it is the right decision. Whether you are a week, a day, an hour or nine minutes late, too late is too late! You are even tempted to wonder why the consortium is letting it arrive at that last minute. Couldn't the offer have been submitted a day or a week earlier? But apparently it doesn't work that way in Thailand.
Drain
Such projects really work towards that deadline. You don't know if you can trust the members of the selection committee and the administrative staff around them and submitting the offer too early could mean that the data is leaked to a competitor. That competitor could then adjust its bid to be the lowest bidder. In such a case, the nine-minute delay could be explained by traffic congestion.
However, the reverse is also possible: the competitor has submitted the quotation and because of that leak, the relevant construction consortium has access to information about that quotation. It now has to adjust its own quotation at the very last minute and does not meet the deadline. Unfortunately!
Finally
It has been a few months since those tenders had to be submitted on time and no doubt the late submission caused quite a stir among the losing consortium. Who is to blame? Was it indeed the traffic jams or was it something else? Did the calculations not go smoothly, was the boss too late with his approval, was the secretary too slow with the calculation? Who knows, but that heads will have rolled is pretty much certain for me.
Source: The Nation
You can be at the office door with your quote a day in advance.
Then you hand in the contract just before the deadline.
So it's a lousy excuse that you were stuck in traffic.
Very bad excuse even..
In public transport tenders in the Netherlands, certain (bus) companies have 2 people on the road with the same offer; one drives from place A and the other from place B to the provincial house where the offer must be handed over. Both persons also set off on time and are followed by an extra car to continue the journey in the event of a breakdown or damage. So in total there are 4 people with 4 cars on the road to make sure that one quote can be submitted. These are tenders to be able to provide public transport by bus in 2 provinces for 3 years and, if suitable, an extension of 5 years… Since 80 to 90 million euros are paid per year, so for a total of 8 years about 600 to 700 million euros (8 years at 80 million = 640 million, 8 years at 90 million = 720 million and the concession has indeed been extended by 5 years, so 8 years in total)
So yes, it is understandable with such amounts to be on the safe side with that bus company.
Dennis, thanks for the explanation. But this account by Gringo is not about NL but about Thailand and here it is apparently very different with the submission of tenders.
Don't play a do-gooder…
That remains to be seen, because Thailand also applies that 9 minutes too late is simply too late. That has nothing to do with improving the world, but with whether you take your business seriously or not. If you can't submit a quote on time, how can you do that when you have to carry out the project?
The time of submission is one. It is fixed in advance and cannot be changed due to possible distortion of competition.
Another matter is opening the tenders. The moment of opening is also determined in advance and cannot be changed. All tenderers are invited to supervise the opening.
Offers are of course submitted in a sealed closed envelope.
If the tendering procedure proceeds according to the rules of the art, at least …
Can't turn a late submission into an urgent one, can it?
In my company I also hand in at the last minute.
I have experienced that my quotation with taped prices ended up with the competitor.
This company did not have to do any research but had a problem because I gave my materials their own type number,
I always incorporated two letters from my company in the original type number.
My wholesaler recognized the offer and warned me.
The tender applicant was none other than the Dutch government, where someone wanted to favor a boyfriend.
So in the Netherlands also this practice and not only in Thiland
If it is everyone's ambition to be the last to submit the offer, the chance of late offers increasing, which will then be inadmissible for obvious reasons 🙂
When I lived in South Africa, you had to deposit official state registrations in a kind of milk churn before a certain hour. We left early with 2 cars to exclude everything. Too late was too late. Too bad.
I am not familiar with this matter, but is it not as often in Thailand : TIT and Thai elastic time.
Have had regular business appointments in the past mostly in Bangkok, rarely my time appointment was honored from the Thai side with the excuse of traffic jam. I, on the other hand, was present well before the agreed time, if the traffic was jammed, I got out and took a motorcycle taxi.
Well,
I have submitted tenders since the 70s, when everything was still friendly politics and then we all went out for dinner, the winner had to pay (and give a calculation fee), after the construction fraud, it became increasingly strict, in the end the client even hired a notary. This one just turned, at the hour U, locked the door and everyone who was inside had to see if the notary acted correctly. He certainly did, first the envelopes were counted and each entrant (sometimes as many as 30 items) was put on a list. Then he opens the envelope and through a computer the name and amounts were noted in a computer and this was immediately visible on a beamer screen.
Not always the lowest was the "lucky" usually the 3rd from the bottom. This was always in the cutlery. This is how it went in the Netherlands, but also in the Seychelles, in Nairobi and in Mauritius. So I think all over the World.