You get what you pay for - and there appears to be a dawning realisation in the public sector that choosing the lowest bid can lead to big trouble. The rapid demise of Jarvis, Rok and Connaught in the quoted sector and a near-continuous litany of failures of well-known unquoted companies such as Kinetics, are putting justifiably parsimonious public sector clients on their guard. And private sector clients are also becoming aware that the cheapest tender does not necessarily equate to the cheapest outturn cost. Two recent tales serve to illustrate this caution. In one case, a cash-rich large contractor came third in the running for a public authority contract worth high single-digit millions. Its bid was several percent above the leading one, from a markedly smaller firm.
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