Under the GP Regulations, a contracting authority shall award the contract to the tenderer which the contracting authority has determined to be fully capable of complying with the terms and conditions of the contract, and whose tender:

• offers the lowest price, or has been determined by the contracting authority to be the most advantageous; and
• fully complies with the criteria for the award of the contract and the essential requirements, as set out in the contract documents.

A contracting authority may decide not to award the contract if it is of the opinion that it is in the public interest not to do so.

In practice, evaluations leading to the award of tender is carried out by a tender evaluation committee ("TEC") comprising of procurement officers, representatives from user departments and technical specialists. The TEC may recommend the award of the tender to one or more tenderers, or recommend that no award be made (whether all tender proposals have been evaluated or not).

However, the final decision to award the tender is vested with the Tender Approving Authority ("TAA"). The members in the TAA must be different from those in the TEC.

We are not aware of any specific limitations regarding the offered bid price. However, the Supplier Guide provides a bid submission checklist for suppliers to assist suppliers in their proposal preparations. This checklist provides that the pricing schedule submitted in the proposal should be the best value-for-money offer the supplier can provide, and that the supplier should not undercut its prices. The checklist also warns against abnormally low bids which could result in potential short term issues such as being unable to meet the service delivery standards, which could potentially lead to long-term implications such as debarment.

There are no mandatory rules in respect of the submission of alternative bids.

In practice, the contracting authority will typically state in the tender documentation if it is willing to consider an alternative offer from tenderers. If the contracting authority is willing to do so, tenderers have the option of submitting an alternative bid which functionally meets the technical specifications, but uses different materials, designs or processes from those specified in the tender. However, the relevant tenderer would still have to submit a base offer which meets all the requirement specifications.