Joshua Mwesigwa
Senior Editor
We reviewed how a sample of subscribed schools scored their incoming bids across a year of catering, uniform, transport and ICT tenders. The losing bids were rarely the most expensive. They were the ones that priced carelessly, in ways the bursar read as a warning about how the contract itself would be run.
The first and most common mistake is quoting against the wrong period. Schools budget by term; a bid that headlines an annual figure forces the evaluator to do arithmetic, and an evaluator doing your arithmetic is an evaluator finding your rounding. Quote per term, and per unit where the RFP allows it, so the comparison is direct.
The second is hiding delivery and installation in a footnote, or omitting it entirely and assuming it is understood. It is not. The third is a price with no validity window, schools award weeks after the deadline, and a quote that may have expired reads as a quote that will be revised upward. State how long the price holds. The fourth is undercutting so aggressively that the margin is visibly impossible; bursars have bought from failed cheap suppliers before, and a price that cannot be honoured loses on credibility, not cost.
The fifth is the quiet killer: no breakdown. A single lump sum invites suspicion; a line-itemised schedule invites trust, and lets the school accept the parts of your bid it likes even when it cannot afford all of it. Show your working. In school procurement, a transparent price beats a low one more often than suppliers expect.