Specifying hospital furniture on e-GP without naming a brand

How to write a furniture specification that stays inside the public procurement rules, still excludes the products you do not want, and gives an evaluation committee something it can actually score.

A hospital writes a furniture specification by copying the datasheet of the product it liked at a demonstration. The brand name is carefully deleted. Every dimension, every angle and every material description stays. Competitors recognise it immediately, one of them complains, and the package goes back to the beginning while the ward waits another quarter.

The rules are not the obstacle here. A generic specification, written properly, excludes poor products more reliably than a brand name ever did.

What the rules actually require

Under the public procurement rules, technical specifications have to be based on functional and performance characteristics rather than on a particular make, model, catalogue or origin. Where there is no other sufficiently precise way to describe a requirement, a reference may be permitted, but it has to carry the words or equivalent, and the specification must not have the effect of limiting competition to one supplier.

Two consequences follow that procurement officers frequently miss. A specification can be brand restrictive without containing a brand name, if the combination of stated values can only be satisfied by one product, and a challenge on that basis usually succeeds. And an or equivalent clause is worthless unless the specification also states how equivalence will be judged, because otherwise the evaluation committee has no defensible basis on which to accept or reject an alternative.

Write ranges and duties, not the numbers off one datasheet

Convert each characteristic into a duty with a range and a tolerance. A mattress platform height that must adjust through a stated range is a requirement. A mattress platform height that must be 450 mm at its lowest and 780 mm at its highest is a fingerprint. Both exclude an unsuitable bed. Only one survives scrutiny.

State the clinical purpose alongside the number where it helps: the lowest height is specified so that a patient can transfer without a step, the highest so that staff can work without stooping. An evaluation committee facing an unfamiliar product can then decide whether the alternative meets the purpose. That is what makes an equivalence clause work.

The five lines that do most of the work

For hospital furniture, most of the difference between a bed that lasts a decade and one that fails in eighteen months sits in a small number of clauses.

• Safe working load, with the standard it is proved against and evidence of the test. A declared load with no test reference behind it is a number somebody typed.
• Structure and finish. Section and gauge of the steel, welded or bolted construction, the pre-treatment before powder coating rather than just the coating itself. Coating failure in Bangladeshi humidity almost always starts with pre-treatment, not with the paint.
• Cleanability. Sealed tube ends, continuous welds ground smooth, radiused internal corners, panels in a material that tolerates the disinfectant your infection control policy actually specifies. Name the class of agent in the specification, because a surface that survives one agent can craze under another.
• Castors and brakes. Wheel diameter, tread material suited to tiled hospital floors, and whether central locking is required. Small hard castors are the most common cause of an item being dragged, and dragging is what breaks the frame.
• Documentation and support. Manufacturer's quality management certification, conformity marking where the item is a regulated device, import registration where required, warranty duration, and a spare parts price list valid for a stated period.

Add one more line that costs nothing and changes bidder behaviour: a requirement that the offered product is already in serial production and not a prototype, evidenced by a catalogue page and by the manufacturer's declaration.

Make the bid provable, and the evaluation possible

Most evaluation disputes come from a compliance sheet where every line says complied. Replace it with a response table that requires a declared value in each row, plus a cross reference to the page of the submitted catalogue where the value appears. A bidder who cannot fill that table has told you something useful before evaluation begins.

1. Ask for declared values, not assertions, and state that a row without a value or a reference will be treated as non responsive.
2. Require a sample or a demonstration unit for high quantity items. On a large bed or trolley package this is the cheapest quality control available.
3. Evaluate the spares price list as part of the bid rather than treating it as an annexe. A low bid attached to expensive castors and mattresses is not a low bid.
4. Reserve inspection at delivery against the declared values in the contract, with a stated right of rejection. Without that clause, the declared value is a promise with no consequence attached to it.

Written this way the specification names no brand, discriminates on nothing but duty and evidence, and still keeps out the product that will be scrap in two years.

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