Buying hospital equipment through e-GP: writing a specification that survives evaluation
A tender that attracts one responsive bidder has failed. How to write technical specifications that are demanding without being accidentally single-vendor, evaluate on lifecycle cost, and assemble a submission that does not get rejected on paperwork.
A tender that attracts one responsive bidder has failed, whatever the file says. Either the specification was written so tightly that only one product could answer it, or the qualification requirements excluded everybody who could have competed. Both outcomes cost the procuring entity money, and both are avoidable at the drafting stage rather than at the evaluation meeting.
Public procurement in Bangladesh runs under the Public Procurement Act 2006 and the Public Procurement Rules 2008, with most goods tenders now issued and submitted through the national e-GP system. The mechanics are well documented. What is less well documented is how to write the technical part so that the process produces a machine your department can still use in year four.
The two ways a specification fails
Too tight. Someone takes a favoured brochure, copies its specification table into the tender document, and changes nothing. Every dimension, every stated angle, every count of preset positions now matches exactly one product. The tender is legally open and commercially closed. It draws one bid at a price that reflects the absence of competition, or it draws a complaint and is cancelled, and the department waits another six months.
Too loose. The specification says electric operating table with standard accessories, and the lowest evaluated price wins. What arrives is technically compliant and clinically unusable: a column that drifts under load, a hand control that fails within the warranty, no service presence in the country. The evaluation committee did nothing wrong. The document gave them nothing to work with.
The three manufacturer test
Read your draft line by line and ask, for each line, whether you can name at least three manufacturers whose products would meet it. If you cannot, either the requirement is genuinely necessary and you can write down the clinical reason in one sentence, or it is an artefact of a copied datasheet and should be relaxed. The Rules require specifications to be written around characteristics and performance rather than brand names, with the words or equivalent where a brand reference is unavoidable. Adding those two words to a copied table does not fix anything, because the evaluation still has no defined test of equivalence.
Write requirements and test methods, not numbers you copied
A good specification line has three parts: what the equipment must do, the measurable threshold, and how the committee will verify it. The third part is the one that is almost always missing, and it is the reason evaluations turn into arguments.
Weak line as commonly written
Why it causes trouble
Better wording
Table top length 2050 mm
Locks to one product and tells you nothing clinically
Table top to accommodate an adult of at least 190 cm with head and leg sections fitted. Tenderer to state the dimension and mark the catalogue page.
Imported from Europe or USA
Origin is not quality, and it excludes strong manufacturers elsewhere
Manufacturer to hold a current quality system certificate for medical devices, with the certificate naming the production site of the offered model.
Should have all standard accessories
Every bidder interprets this differently, so no two prices compare
An itemised accessory schedule in the tender document, quantities stated, priced line by line.
Latest model
Cannot be evaluated, and invites disputes after award
Model in current production at date of tender, with the manufacturer confirming a stated minimum parts support period from date of supply.
Warranty 1 year
Ambiguous start date is the most common post-award dispute in this country
Warranty of the stated period beginning on the date of the signed acceptance certificate after installation and testing, not on the date of shipment or delivery.
Two habits are worth adopting. Group requirements into mandatory and desirable, and say plainly that failure on any mandatory line makes the offer non-responsive. And if you intend to score anything, publish the scoring in the tender document: criteria that are not in the document cannot be applied afterwards, and a committee that improvises a scoring sheet on the day is inviting a successful complaint.
Evaluate on lifecycle cost, not on the quoted price
The tender price of a hospital machine is often the smaller part of what you will pay for it. Evaluation on price alone reliably selects the product with the most expensive consumables, and everyone involved knows this before the envelope is opened.
The remedy is to define, in advance and in the document, the elements that will be added to the offered price to produce an evaluated price. Typical components:
Supply, delivery, installation, testing and training as a single package, so nobody wins by leaving installation out and invoicing for it later.
A consumables basket over a stated period. List the items and the annual quantity your department actually uses, require unit prices, hold those prices for a stated number of years, and add the total to the evaluated price. This is where the razor and blades problem gets solved. It matters most for anything with proprietary consumables: sterilisation indicators and packaging, suction liners and filters, thermoplastic immobilisation masks, dosimetry film, reagent and tube systems.
Maintenance for years two to five, priced at tender stage. Once the contract is signed and the competitors have gone home, your bargaining position on the maintenance price has gone with them. Settle it while it still exists, and require the same coverage definition from every bidder or the numbers will not compare.
Spares availability. Require a priced list of the ten or so parts most likely to be needed, price-held, plus a written statement of what will be stocked in Bangladesh.
State the formula. If a bidder cannot reproduce your evaluated price from the published method and their own submission, the method is not transparent enough.
Manufacturer authorisation, and what it is worth
The Manufacturer's Authorisation Form is a standard requirement in goods tenders here and one of the most frequently accepted worthless documents. A properly issued authorisation does four things at once, and a letter that does not do all four is a dealership announcement with a stamp on it.
It is issued by the manufacturer that actually makes the goods, on the manufacturer's letterhead, signed by a person with authority to bind that company. A letter from a regional trading office that does not manufacture is not the same instrument.
It names this tender by its reference number and this tenderer by legal name. A general letter of appointment addressed to whom it may concern does not qualify the bidder for anything.
It is dated after the tender was published. A letter predating the tender cannot have authorised a bid for it.
It commits the manufacturer to something: continued supply of spare parts for a stated period, and an undertaking to meet the warranty and service obligations directly if the local agent fails to. Without that undertaking the form protects nobody.
Verify it independently. Find the manufacturer's contact details on their own published website, not on the letter, and write to them quoting the tender number. Manufacturers answer these questions, and the reply arrives well within the evaluation period. A forged authorisation is one of the few things in a tender file that can be checked with certainty.
Certification requirements that mean something
Asking for internationally certified is asking for nothing. Ask for identifiable documents, and say that you will verify them.
A quality system certificate for the manufacturer, with the certificate number, the issuing certification body, the issue and expiry dates, the scope wording, and the site address of the factory that will make your goods.
Product conformity evidence appropriate to the device: for a CE marked device, the certificate from the notified body along with the notified body's four digit identification number, or the manufacturer's declaration of conformity where the device class permits self declaration. For a device cleared in the United States, the clearance number, which you can look up.
Electrical safety evidence. A test report to the relevant safety standard, issued by a testing laboratory, naming the exact model. Designed in accordance with is not the same claim as tested and reported by.
Bangladesh import documentation. Registration and import permission from the national drug administration where the device category requires it. This is a separate matter from foreign certification. A perfectly certified device can still be unimportable without the right local paperwork, and the tender should say who carries that risk.
The documents a responsive submission needs
Most rejections in goods tenders are not technical. They happen because something was missing, unsigned, expired or attached in the wrong envelope. Whether you are bidding or evaluating, work from a checklist rather than from memory.
An active e-GP registration with a valid enrolment for the correct category, and enough time before the deadline for the payment and upload to complete. Submissions fail on upload timing far more often than on merit.
Tender security in the exact form and validity period stated in the Tender Data Sheet, or a securing declaration where that instrument is permitted.
Trade licence, tax and VAT registration, and the audited accounts for the years the document specifies, not for the years you have handy.
Similar goods experience supported by completion certificates from the purchasers, with values and dates, matching the thresholds set in the document.
The manufacturer's authorisation as described above, plus the manufacturer's own certifications.
A clause by clause technical compliance statement that quotes the tender clause, states the offered value, and cites the page of the attached brochure where it can be found. A sheet that says complied against every line, with no page references, is the single most common reason a technically strong offer loses to a weaker one.
Original manufacturer catalogues with the relevant figures marked, rather than a locally produced sheet that restates the claim.
Priced schedules complete, arithmetic checked, and every page signed as required. No alteration to the text of the tender document itself, which turns an offer into a counter offer and makes it non-responsive.
The delivery and installation programme and the training plan, which the document usually asks for and bidders usually omit.
If you are the procuring entity
Hold a pre-tender meeting for anything technically demanding, and issue the minutes and every clarification as a formal addendum to all tenderers. Answering one bidder privately taints the process.
Allow a realistic tender period. Equipment bidders need time to obtain a manufacturer authorisation from abroad, and short deadlines quietly restrict competition to whoever already holds a letter.
Use post-qualification for what it is meant for: confirming that the lowest evaluated responsive tenderer can actually perform, including a physical check of their service capability in Bangladesh. Clarification after opening is permitted; supplying a missing qualification document is not.
Write the acceptance and payment milestones so that final payment follows a signed acceptance certificate after installation and functional testing, not delivery to the store.