Gispen promises Ghent University a 51-year resupply guarantee on office furniture — and sees its bid ejected for all three lots as unrealistic
Furniture maker Gispen quoted a resupply period of 51 years in its bid for the furniture of the Ghent University Association — against 5 to 20 years from its competitors and 10 years in its own bid of a year earlier — whereupon the university, after a fruitless request for substantiation, declared the bid irregular for all lots as containing ‘an element that does not correspond to reality’; the Council of State saw nothing wrong with that prima facie and rejected the extreme-urgency application.
What happened?
Ghent University organised a restricted call for tenders for the supply and installation of furniture for the partners of the Ghent University Association (specifications no. 2011/019), divided into three lots: desks and tables, chairs, and library shelving. Among the award criteria — price at 50 points, technical quality at 25, service and after-care at 15, aesthetics at 10 — was a 5-point sub-criterion ‘resupply period’: the period during which the administration can reorder identical furniture or parts, minimum five years, with the longest period as the reference in the formula 5 × X/Y. Gispen, selected for all three lots, submitted its bid on 28 February 2012 and quoted a resupply period of 51 years. That raised eyebrows: the other bidders — including Mewaf International, Pami and Vepa — offered between five and twenty years, and Gispen itself had quoted ten years in a similar file one year earlier (2010/010). On 6 April 2012 the university asked by registered letter, expressly ‘on pain of nullity of your bid’, for precise substantiation: which goods are own production and which purchased, how raw materials and the production process would be guaranteed for 51 years (for instance by keeping specific machines in service), and — for the purchased goods — declarations from the suppliers themselves. Gispen’s answer remained general: steel and wood would surely remain available, the Style range is still supplied after fifty years, and its suppliers meet strict selection standards — but the requested supplier declarations were missing. The university moreover obtained the opinion of Henning Figge, president of the European federation of office-furniture manufacturers, who called a resupply period of 50 years exceptional. On 15 May 2012 the rector declared Gispen’s bid irregular and therefore non-existent for all three lots under article 110, § 2, of the Royal Decree of 8 January 1996: a resupply period of 51 years — supplying until 2063 — is an element that does not correspond to reality, and because that period serves as the reference value in the scoring formula, it would strongly distort the award of points and undermine the fair course of the procedure. The Council of State followed that reasoning prima facie on 10 July 2012: Gispen’s clarification was not a ‘sufficiently developed and documented clarification removing every reasonable doubt’, and the argument that the sub-criterion was worth only 5 of the 100 points did not convince — precisely because of the extreme period, the points gap with competitors could be significant for the final ranking. Neither plea was serious; the application was rejected with 175 euros in costs for Gispen.
Why does this matter?
This judgment is an early and clear application of a rule bidders tend to underestimate: whoever inflates a parameter in his bid beyond the credible in order to score points risks not a lower score but the complete rejection of his bid. The design of the specifications raised the stakes: the longest resupply period became the denominator in the formula, so that 51 years would not only earn Gispen 5 points but crush all competitors proportionally — a bidder offering 20 years would score fewer than 2 points. The Council confirms that the authority may cut off such distortion via article 110, § 2, and at once shows the careful route: first a targeted request for substantiation (with clear, specific sub-questions and the sanction attached), then a decision resting on several objective anchors — the competitors’ periods, Gispen’s own earlier bid and an opinion from the sector. The dogmatic aside is interesting too: Gispen argued that incomparability of bids belongs to substantive rather than relative irregularity — to which the Council drily replied that it had no interest in that grievance, since in that case its bid had to be rejected anyway. And the proportionality defence foundered on the finding that the unrealistic period applied to all three lots.
The lesson
For bidders: an award criterion with a relative formula invites strategic bidding, but the limit is reality — promise only what you can demonstrably deliver, especially when your bid is miles above the market standard and your own earlier bids. If you receive a request for clarification ‘on pain of nullity’, treat it for what it is: your last chance. Answer every sub-question concretely and supply the requested documents, such as supplier declarations — a well-meant but general answer does not suffice. For contracting authorities: this file is a template for carefully rejecting an implausible bid. Ask targeted questions, document the market standard (competing bids, the sector federation, earlier files of the same bidder) and state why the unrealistic value distorts the comparison — especially when it weighs as the reference value in your scoring formula.
Ask yourself
Can you substantiate every period, guarantee or promise in your bid with documents if the authority asks — even ten, twenty or fifty years ahead? Does your bid on a criterion deviate spectacularly from what the market and your own earlier bids offer, and do you have a file ready explaining that deviation? Do you realise that a request for clarification on pain of nullity is not a formality but an examination, and do you answer it point by point with supporting documents? And as a contracting authority: is your scoring formula robust against extreme bids, or does one unrealistic value as reference term wreck the whole comparison?
About this database
The Council of State (Raad van State / Conseil d'État) is Belgium's supreme administrative court. In disputes over public procurement — from contract awards to tenderer exclusions — the Council of State is the final arbiter. The rulings in this database are summarised by TenderWolf in plain language, with practical lessons for tenderers and contracting authorities. View all rulings →