“You don’t know me, but I work for an organisation that you recently submitted a tender for” she said
okay…I replied, wondering what this was about
“You know you didn’t win, but did you know that the crew who were awarded the contract have never ever actually provided that service. We knew it and our idiots still awarded them the contract!!”
Now, she had my full attention so I asked her to explain in more detail.
“I am raging that this happened. We had an opportunity to do some good work here but instead we are are literally squandering money on people who have no idea what they are doing and it must stop” she said.
Trying to get a word in I asked her how this could have happened.
“You didn’t win the tender because they scored the applicants based on rubbish irrelevant criteria so that the contract could be awarded to who they wanted“
ok, all I got was the usual “Dear John” letter, so I asked her what could I do about this?
“You need to ask them for the scoring of the tender and also ask who did actually win“
she went on, “please please follow through on this because this carry on is wrong and it must be stopped“.
The Tender…
The tender wasn’t any big deal. It was a contract to produce a series of podcasts for an organisation funded by one of the City Councils.
We were given a brief, we submitted our tender and ticked the box on any information that was requested. We have produced hundreds of podcasts in the last 5 years for many organisations so theoretically we stood a good chance of success once we priced the job competitively.
We received the usual “Dear John” letter saying that “unfortunately we were not successful on this occasion” and being quite honest I didn’t anymore about it.
You win some and you lose some, no big deal..
The Follow Up
After I received that phone call I decided to probe a little bit more and sent in a query requesting some feedback as to the reason why we were not successful. Technically this is information you are entitled to.
This gentle probe yielded very little information, but I did learn who the successful company were and sure enough I knew that they had never ever produced podcasts before.
Wow, surely this is a “don’t pass go” situation that would immediately rule out that service provider I assumed.
I replied to them and asked the simple question “how could you award the contract for podcasting to someone who has never produced podcasts before?“
Needless to say I didn’t get a response and I resent my email a couple of weeks later.
Eventually I received another cock and bull story and someone else in the organisation said they would contact me to explain. This never happened.
This was a royal waste of my time and leading nowhere so I was prepared to leave it off until I received another call from my whistleblower friend.
“Well, did they send you the scoring criteria?“
I explained the brick wall situation and couldn’t do anymore.
“Make an official request under the Freedom of Information (FOI) rules – as a public body they are obliged to fulfil this” – she really wanted this exposed.
You do know that you are now officially “the troublemaker” when you take that step I was thinking, but…
The Result!
The FOI process worked and eventually I received the scoring card that was used to award the tender to this other crew.
They scored zero for their ability to do podcasts but they got top scores in the category of “being a member of their organisation” and top score for “work in the community”. On each of these categories we scored zero so we were pipped at the post by a service provider who never provided that service before!
Criteria is always made known in advance of a tender but this organisation apply it randomly after.
Their rules preclude a business such as ours of being a member of their organisation (so that is a no win) and even through we do in fact do a lot of work with community organisations we were never asked that question in advance – the examples we gave of podcasts that we had produced were very much community related.
End of the Road
In total frustration I brought this to the attention of the person in the Council who oversees the funding of this organisation.
It is fair to say that they weren’t terribly bothered and were irritated by my probing.
“Out of courtesy I am replying to you” was what I got.
My neighbour
I spoke to a neighbour of mine who for a period was involved in the awarding of tenders in a local Council and I explained the story to him and I asked the genuine question – is there anyone that cares about this?
He explained that a pass/fail should have been applied here – someone who has never provided that service should clearly be automatically disqualified from the competition.
BUT….what he said next to me genuinely blew me away.
This happens the whole time and so many tenders find their way to “favourites” regardless of rules etc.
But isn’t this public money that is being spent and doesn’t it need to be done fairly and transparently?
His advice for me was, shut up, move on because the only thing that will happen is that you will be marked as a troublemaker and that’s a sure way of never winning another tender!
To my whistleblowing friend, I’m sorry, I did try.
To the rest of us, wow ..
Greg
Greg Canty is a partner at Fuzion a Brand Communications agency with offices in Dublin and Cork, Ireland
Greg Canty Fuzion Blog 