Josh Schwebel <privatejosh@gmail.com> To: The Employee <employee@forestcitygallery.com>, forestcitygallery@gmail.com <forestcitygallery@gmail.com>
hi both,
just to follow up about the London Community Grant, I got this answer from my father, about the question of trying to understand what open for public tender means. His answer is kind of helpful?
"The question is ambiguous. Tender is a formal process in which specifications for the work, the rules for the bidding process and forms of contract documents are all made public. The process is intended to ensure that all potential bidders are treated fairly and equally. Tender packages can be very complex and once published are not changed (or at least changes made after parties have started to prepare their bids cannot be prejudicial to any of the bidding parties and must, of course be advised to all of the potential bidders at the same time. You can see examples at https://london.bidsandtenders.ca/.
Because it is so formal, tendering a project is very different from seeking competitive bids or getting estimates from different contractors - an informal process. I don't know whether this informal process is what they mean by "open to competitive bidding by two or more parties". They may be satisfied as long as the project is not sole sourced, as you suggest. But the wording is not clear."