10 mis­takes in con­struc­tion con­tracts (and how to avoid them) — The com­plaint in the ten­der (1).

Imag­ine a pub­lic ten­der or an open pro­ce­dure. You have exact­ly one shot. When pric­ing the ten­der, you notice that cer­tain designs “don’t work”. They are tech­ni­cal­ly impos­si­ble or eco­nom­i­cal­ly point­less.

What to do?

Often enough, the con­trac­tor pro­ceeds as fol­lows: One day before the dead­line for sub­mit­ting bids, he writes a let­ter point­ing out the prob­lems. And enclos­es it with his offer. He quotes 1.00 euro or some­times even 0.00 euro as the unit price.

Not good

You have just read it. Don’t. If you have a prob­lem with the default, con­test it. And do it in good time, i.e. a few days before the bid sub­mis­sion dead­line. If pos­si­ble, via the respec­tive pro­cure­ment por­tal used. A com­plaint “in the bid” is often late.

What is it any­way?

One can also ask the fur­ther ques­tion (depend­ing on the indi­vid­ual case): Is this even a (prob­a­bly) late com­plaint or not already an amend­ment of the LV or also a mixed cal­cu­la­tion, after all you offer strange unit prices? You see, this thing is not going to turn out well.

Con­clu­sion

Plan for a time buffer when pro­cess­ing quotes. If pos­si­ble, do not rep­ri­mand “on offer”. And if you com­plain, then com­plain, and do so explic­it­ly and in con­nec­tion with a request for rem­e­dy under the set­ting of a dead­line.

*This legal tip is not a sub­sti­tute for legal advice in indi­vid­ual cas­es. By its very nature, it is incom­plete, nor is it spe­cif­ic to your case, and it also rep­re­sents a snap­shot in time, as legal prin­ci­ples and case law change over time. It can­not and does not cov­er all con­ceiv­able con­stel­la­tions, serves enter­tain­ment and ini­tial ori­en­ta­tion pur­pos­es and is intend­ed to moti­vate you to clar­i­fy legal issues at an ear­ly stage, but not to dis­cour­age you from doing so.