Buying nuclear medicine equipment through e-GP: writing a specification that gets three real bids

How technical specifications become accidentally single-vendor, which certificates prove what, how to evaluate on lifecycle cost rather than headline price, and the documents an e-GP submission has to carry to survive responsiveness checking.

A tender that attracts one responsive bid has failed, even if it is signed, delivered and commissioned on time, because nobody found out what the equipment was worth. The usual cause is not corruption. It is a specification assembled by copying paragraphs out of one manufacturer's brochure, which produces a document only that manufacturer can answer: entirely legal, well intentioned, and useless as price discovery.

Public procurement in Bangladesh runs under the Public Procurement Act 2006 and Rules 2008, with submission through e-GP. The rules are not the hard part. The specification is.

Specify function and measured performance, not construction

Write three things for every requirement: what the system must do clinically, the measurable parameter that demonstrates it with a tolerance, and the published standard the measurement follows. A line without all three is either a preference or a fingerprint.

For gamma camera and SPECT systems the measurement language already exists. NEMA NU 1 defines intrinsic spatial resolution, intrinsic energy resolution, intrinsic flood field uniformity, system planar sensitivity and count rate performance over a defined useful field of view. IEC 61675-2 covers SPECT system characteristics. Requiring a test report to a stated edition of the standard for the exact model offered, and requiring the same parameters to be re-measured on site at acceptance, is the single most useful thing a technical specification can do. It converts an argument about brochures into a measurement with a pass or fail.

Give ranges and tolerances rather than points. A useful field of view stated to the millimetre is a model number in disguise. The same figure stated as a minimum is a requirement several manufacturers can meet.

How a specification becomes accidentally single-vendor

Written as	Why only one bidder can answer	Write it as
Detector must be CZT arranged as twelve heads in a ring	That is a product description, not a requirement	State the required system sensitivity, and the total body SPECT acquisition time at a stated administered activity, and let each design answer in its own way
Crystal thickness exactly 9.5 mm, useful field of view 540 mm by 400 mm	Construction and dimensions to the millimetre are a fingerprint	Energy resolution not worse than the stated figure at 140 keV, sensitivity not less than the stated figure, field of view not less than the stated minimum in each axis, all measured per NEMA NU 1
Reconstruction using the named proprietary algorithm	A trade name cannot be met by a competitor at any price	Iterative reconstruction with attenuation, scatter and resolution recovery, with the correction method documented and the parameters accessible to the physicist
Bidder must already have supplied this exact model to a Bangladeshi government hospital	Excludes on history rather than capability, and locks in the incumbent	Require documented service capability: an engineer trained on the offered model, a stated attendance time, a local spares list, contactable references anywhere
Delivery within an unusually short period	Only a bidder holding stock can comply, and normally only one does	Set a delivery period that reflects genuine manufacturing and shipping lead times, with liquidated damages for late delivery

The last row is the one procurement teams rarely recognise as a restriction. A delivery period shorter than the honest manufacturing lead time is a sole-source clause dressed as urgency.

The test that takes two weeks and saves two years

Before publication, send the identical draft specification to at least three manufacturers or their local agents on the same day, and ask each to mark every line they cannot meet and state why. If two of the three cannot bid, you have written a sole-source specification whatever your intention was, and you now know exactly which lines caused it. This is legitimate pre-tender market consultation, done in writing and on record. Doing it after a complaint is a much less comfortable conversation.

Certificates: what each one actually proves

• CE marking under EU MDR 2017/745. Require the Declaration of Conformity naming the exact model and the notified body number. A general certificate covering a company or a product family is not the same document, and it is the substitution most often attempted.
• US FDA clearance where the manufacturer claims it. Require the clearance number and the device name as cleared, then check that name character by character against the model offered.
• ISO 13485. This certifies the manufacturer's quality management system and says nothing about the device. Bidders routinely present it as a device approval, and committees routinely accept it as one.
• IEC 60601-1 and IEC 60601-1-2. Electrical safety and electromagnetic compatibility. Require the test reports, and take the EMC one seriously in a hospital where a generator changes over regularly and the imaging system shares a distribution board with equipment nobody documented.
• NEMA NU 1 or IEC 61675-2 performance report for the offered model at a stated edition, not for a predecessor.
• DGDA registration for import of the device, and the BAERA authorisation path for the radiation generating components. Ask the bidder to state what documentation they will supply in support of your application.
• Manufacturer's Authorisation Form naming this tender, this model and this local agent, signed by someone identifiable at the manufacturer. A general dealership letter is not an MAF and should not be accepted as one.

Evaluate on lifecycle cost, and say so in advance

The evaluated cost method, with the formula and evaluation period, has to be declared in the tender document before bids are opened. You cannot decide at evaluation that maintenance should have counted. Decide first, publish it, and require every bidder to price the same table.

Cost element	What to require in the price schedule	Why it gets left out
Supply, delivery, installation, commissioning	Lump sum to site, with the scope boundary stated item by item	Site works quietly assumed to be the hospital's problem
Warranty	Duration in years, parts and labour, on site, exclusions listed explicitly	The exclusions are where the margin hides
Maintenance contract after warranty	Firm annual price for each year of the evaluation period, quoted now	Otherwise quoted later at whatever the department can be made to pay
Major replaceable items	Unit price and service interval for X-ray tube, detector modules, collimators, UPS batteries	Presented as unforeseeable, though the manufacturer knows the interval
Software licences and upgrades	What is included, what recurs, the cost of a version upgrade	Converted to a subscription in year two
QA sources, phantoms and consumables	Flood source replacement, dose calibrator sources, phantom set	Not considered until the first QC test cannot run
Site works and utilities	Shielding, air conditioning, UPS rating, earthing, floor strengthening	Discovered after award, funded from a budget that does not exist
Uptime guarantee	Percentage, measurement method, and penalty	Absent, so downtime costs the bidder nothing

Evaluate over a stated period of years rather than over the invoice. The false economy is familiar to anyone who has run a hospital workshop: the lowest headline price arrives with a short warranty and an unquoted maintenance contract, and by year four it has cost more than the expensive bid and spends weeks waiting for a part to clear customs.

Training, service and spares: the clauses that decide year three

• Name trainees by role, not by headcount. Two technologists, one medical physicist, one biomedical engineer, with the physicist trained in acceptance testing and routine QC rather than operation. Operator training produces nobody who can prove the machine has drifted.
• Require training on the installed system after handover, as well as any factory training. Factory training on a demonstration unit running different software does not transfer to your room.
• Require the service engineer's certificate for the offered model, and either residency in Bangladesh or a guaranteed attendance time counted from the fault report, with a penalty attached.
• Name the spares to be held locally rather than requiring a spares holding in general terms. The manufacturer knows what the list should contain.
• Require the service manual, error code list and calibration procedures at handover. Some manufacturers will not release a full service manual. Find that out at tender stage, when it can be scored, rather than in year three when you have no options. Settle remote diagnostic access in the same clause.
• Tie a meaningful portion of payment to a documented acceptance test carried out by the hospital's own physicist against the specification. If the installed system misses a specified NEMA figure, that becomes a contractual matter rather than a discussion, which is the only form in which it gets resolved.

The e-GP submission itself

Most rejections at responsiveness checking are administrative rather than technical. The bid was competent and the paperwork was not.

• Tender security in exactly the form, amount and validity stated in the tender data sheet
• Valid trade licence, TIN and VAT registration, with current income tax and VAT clearance
• Audited financial statements for the number of years required, and a bank solvency certificate
• Similar supply experience, with completion certificates from named clients who can be telephoned
• Manufacturer's Authorisation Form for this tender and this model
• A clause by clause technical compliance sheet
• Original manufacturer catalogues and test reports, not retyped tables
• Declaration of eligibility and non-blacklisting, and a signed joint venture agreement where applicable
• The price schedule in the tender's own format, completed with no blank rows

The compliance sheet is where good bids die. A sheet reading COMPLIED in every row, with no reference to any supporting page, is evidence of nothing and can properly be treated as non-responsive. Reference the catalogue page and clause for every claim. Where you deviate, declare it and justify it: a declared deviation can be evaluated on its merits, whereas an undeclared one the committee discovers destroys the credibility of every other row.

Questions the evaluation committee should ask out loud

1. Does the model name on every certificate match the model being offered, exactly, character for character?
2. Is the performance report for this model and this edition of the standard, or for a predecessor with a similar name?
3. Who installed the last three of these in the region, and may we telephone them without the bidder present? What is the maintenance price in the fifth year, and is it firm?
4. Where exactly does the bidder's scope end and ours begin, item by item, for shielding, air conditioning, UPS, earthing and civil work?
5. Is the UPS sized against the imaging system's average draw or against the CT's momentary demand during a scan? An undersized UPS in a hospital with an unstable supply drops the system mid-acquisition, and the patient has to be re-injected.
6. If commissioning is delayed by the bidder, does the warranty start at delivery or at handover? That single clause is worth months.

Finally, allow realistic time for letter of credit opening, shipping, customs clearance and any duty exemption documentation. A schedule that assumes none of these takes time produces either a failed contract or a bidder who has priced the risk into the headline number, and you pay for it either way.

Back to all Insights