Regularisation
Regularisation is the correction of errors or gaps in a tender. Not all defects can be regularised — the distinction between substantial and non-substantial irregularities determines whether correction is possible.
MDD Pharma was allowed to 'clarify' daily delivery into weekly — Multipharma wasn't allowed to fix its 'forbidden variant'. Two weights, equal treatment thrown out
Ixelles' public welfare centre lets one bidder convert daily delivery into weekly after a 'request for clarification', but denies another bidder the chance to fix a similar irregularity — without explaining why the two situations differ.
Below the European threshold the contracting authority MAY allow regularisation of a missing tender form — and the applicant had three days to challenge that, not until the hearing
The Council of State dismisses Brion & Charlot's extreme-urgency suspension against the award of an intensive-care interior contract to Emil Palm, confirming that in a negotiated procedure below the European threshold a contracting authority may allow a substantial irregularity (here: a missing final offer form) to be regularised — and adding a procedural lesson: those finding their competitor's price drop suspicious must request the lifting of confidentiality BEFORE the hearing, not at it.
If two of three bidders had to fix their offers, 'a number of offers had irregularities' is not a motivation
The Council of State suspends the award of lot 6 of De Watergroep's framework agreement for grounds maintenance because the award report only mentioned that 'a number of offers' had been regularised, without specifying which bidders, which issues, and what the outcome was — while in fact two of the three bidders had received regularisation requests.
A certificate that you'll meet the deadline is not an execution schedule — even if you call it one
The Council of State rejects the suspension request of a contractor whose offer was declared substantially irregular because it submitted a certificate of compliance instead of a detailed execution schedule, and only provided the actual schedule after being questioned — too late in an open procedure.
Redeveloping a €16.5M square at zero public cost: if you don't include everything in the financial plan, you're out
The Council of State rejects a developer's challenge against the declaration of irregularity of its tender for a major public square redevelopment, finding that omitting certain facilities from the financial plan — while including them in descriptive notes — constitutes a substantive irregularity that prevents comparison with other tenders, and the contracting authority was not obliged to allow regularisation.
Iveco challenges DAF's certification on the defence contract — while Iveco itself regularised three items of its own bid
The Council of State rejects Iveco's annulment action against the award of a defence contract for 879 trucks to DAF Trucks: a EURO III certificate based on UNECE Regulation No. 49 is equivalent to the EC type-approval abolished in 2006, and Iveco has no standing to challenge the regularisation of DAF's bid because it itself was allowed to adjust its own bid during negotiations on essential requirements.
A start-up of five ex-employees may invoke their former employer's references — but the contracting authority must actually verify those references
The Council of State annuls the award of an urban planning study contract to SEN5 — a company set up by five ex-colleagues of the applicant — not because they used each other's references, but because the City of Jodoigne accepted a reference list that did not meet the specifications' requirement that the amount per assignment be stated.
If you ask everyone the same question, it's not unequal treatment — even if only one bidder has to adjust
The Council of State rejects Neovision's extreme urgency application against the award to Ecubel of refurbished laptops for Liège provincial schools because the Province could invoke article 76 §5 of the Royal Decree of 18 April 2017 to allow Ecubel to correct its offer — provided it asked all bidders the same clarification question simultaneously, which it did.
Two small Excel sheets saying '42 hours included' cost you the World Expo — while your competitor's missing offer form does not
The Council of State rejects the extreme urgency application of consortium Voysu against the award of the Belgian pavilion at Expo Osaka 2025 to Dirty Monitor, because BelExpo rightly discarded Voysu's BAFO for two added Excel tabs mentioning 'up to 2 correction rounds' and 'up to 42 hours included' — whereas the offer form that Dirty Monitor forgot to upload was not a substantial irregularity and could be requested afterwards under article 66 §3 of the Public Procurement Act.
If you contest the irregularity finding instead of fixing it, you can't later claim unequal treatment
The Council of State rejects Sportinfrabouw's appeal: it had the same opportunity to regularise as Lesuco but chose to contest the finding of irregularity instead of adjusting its offer — and therefore cannot invoke discrimination.
Submitting new plans after your bid is not 'correcting a material error' — it's modifying your offer
The Council of State rejects the emergency appeal of a design team that, after submitting its design-build offer, sent revised plans and a €40,000 price reduction to 'correct' elevation errors: such structural adjustments are a modification of the offer, not a correction of a material error within the meaning of article 34.
Defence corrected an Excel error in the winning bid without saying which one — and that single silent asterisk costs the award
The Council of State annuls Defence's award of a framework agreement for maintenance at the Florennes military zone because the award decision states that the winner's T-figure was 'rectified' from 107.36 to 91.34, but nowhere explains which error was actually corrected — and post-hoc explanations by email cannot heal that defect.
Use the workaround without protest, lose the right to attack it later
The Council of State refuses to suspend an award where both BAFOs were submitted by email after the e-tendering platform failed, because the complainant itself used that very same workaround without any objection and therefore has no standing to invoke the irregularity against the winner.
Director-company, permanent representative, special mandate: Charleroi skipped the entire chain and wrongly voided the offer
The city of Charleroi declared the TAROS-TRBA offer null because it 'could not confirm' the signing power of the natural person who signed — yet the chain of director-companies, permanent representatives and special powers of attorney was right there in the offer's annexes.
If your own cover letter states you cannot meet the specifications, a mere promise to 'comply' won't fix the irregularity
The Council of State dismisses Veolia's emergency suspension request against Ghent University, the incumbent contractor's bid for the HVAC maintenance framework being declared substantially irregular because Veolia's cover letter expressly stated that some specifications were 'not feasible' and proposed an alternative working method — defects going to the very essence of the bid that could not be cured by a mere statement of intent to comply.
You can't 'edit out' a late offer component — if one piece arrives late, the entire offer is tainted
Intradel tried to rescue a previously-annulled award to Strabag by simply excluding the late-submitted performance note from the scoring, but the Council of State confirms that a late component poisons the whole offer — you can't reason away the contamination by ignoring the contaminated piece.
When the contracting authority offers a chance to regularise and you refuse — that equals 'I do not accept the contract terms'
The Council of State dismisses Verhoeve Marc's challenge to the rejection of his lowest bid for the redesign of the Waaitjesstraat in Lebbeke: he read item 5 of the bill of quantities (600 m² of cobblestone surfacing) as covering only the repair of the ~50 m² still in place, refused the formal offer to regularise, and stuck stubbornly to his own reading — a stance the Council equates with non-acceptance of the contract terms.
What the tender documents functionally require is a minimum requirement — even if the word 'mandatory' or 'module' never appears
The Council of State refuses suspension: a tool that the specifications require to perform 'native' analyses against ISO 9001, 14001 and 45001 is a minimum requirement under article 76 of the placement royal decree — failing to demonstrate that functionality renders the offer substantially irregular, even if the documents never used the word 'modules'.
In a negotiated procedure you may refuse regularisation — but the file must show you considered it
The Council of State suspends the award of lot 2 of La Louvière's parks-guarding contract because the contracting authority, when finding Seris Security's offer substantially irregular for an 'abnormally low' price, failed to demonstrably weigh whether to allow regularisation under article 76, § 5, of the placement royal decree — a discretionary power that must actually be exercised.
An offer without a minus sign is not a negative price — and 'clarifying' it by email after the evaluation report does not save the award
The Council of State suspends the award to Oxfam-Solidarité of a textile collection contract in BEP-Environnement's recycling parks because the contracting authority assigned eleven points to a price of '€1' it treated as negative, while the bid carried no minus sign and the bidder's written confirmation arrived five days after the evaluation report on which the award is based.
Submit a class-1 accreditation where class 2 is required, then ask whether the authority should have flagged it — that doesn't work
The Council of State rejects NV COS's extreme-urgency suspension against its non-selection for the renovation of the GC De Zandloper grandstand: the contract is indeed a works contract, and a bidder who supplies the wrong accreditation class without invoking article 3, first paragraph, 2° of the Accreditation Act cannot blame the authority for not asking.
Unilaterally redrawing the price structure of an offer and calling it 'arithmetic-error correction' doesn't work — article 34 only covers errors whose result is contrary to the bidder's intention
The Council of State suspends the award of Charleroi's contract for rental and maintenance of work clothing because the city unilaterally 'corrected' CWS Workwear's prices under article 34 of the Procurement Royal Decree — while the alleged 'error' did not produce a result contrary to the bidder's intention, and the city did not seek the bidder's real intention but applied its own conception of what was acceptable.
A price examination that says 'normal' in the award decision and just repeats the same sentence elsewhere in the file is not a price examination
The Council of State suspends the award of the Fedasil meal-catering contract to Aramark because the Federal Public Service Internal Affairs only states in the award decision that the prices are 'normal' and merely repeats that statement verbatim in the technical analyses — while Aramark bid more than 15% below the estimate for lot 2 and the Council finds no concrete trace of an actual general price examination in the file.
Deciding not to negotiate in a competitive procedure with negotiation: only if you concretely prove the bids meet your needs
The Council of State suspends the decision of the municipality of Auderghem to discard an architects' team's bid for exceeding a page limit in a competitive procedure with negotiation, because the municipality cannot show anywhere that it actually assessed whether the regular bids met its needs before deciding not to negotiate.
Filling in 'included' for 11 lines of your bill of quantities can be lawful — if you can justify each clustering separately
The Council of State rejects the extreme-urgency suspension against the award of a kindergarten construction contract to VMG-De Cock because the contracting authority correctly accepted the eleven 'included' lines in the winner's bill of quantities after a substantiated justification was given per line and the tender documents did not require a separate price for any of those lines.
Withdraw a first award decision and re-award to the other bidder? The motivation has to genuinely explain why you changed your mind
The Council of State suspends Verviers' second award decision because the motivation — a string of 'stereotyped formulas' on the conformity of the offers — does not show that the contracting authority actually carried out a fresh regularity check after withdrawing its first award, which had been based precisely on the substantial irregularity of that same offer.
If you allow Art. 66 §3 supplementation of references, your motivation must show that the supplement actually meets the threshold
The Council of State annuls the award of the Charleroi maintenance contract for high-voltage cabins because the city let two competitors complete their qualitative selection file but failed to show in its motivation that the supplemented references actually reach the required threshold of 50,000 € HT per year.
Statutory representation isn't the same as 'daily management' — don't conflate the two when nullifying a bid
The Council of State suspends Charleroi's decision to declare the lowest bid (€195,200) null for 'unproven signature authority' because the city wrongly conflated 'external representation power' with 'daily management'.
A '<' sign before your deadline turns your times into a range — and costs you a major SEPP contract
Cohezio, an established occupational health and prevention service provider, loses its SEPPT contract with the Province of Liège because it used formulae like '< 24h' instead of fixed intervention times — which the province read as a prohibited time range, and which the Council of State found not manifestly unreasonable enough to suspend.
In a negotiated procedure you may let the winner cure a missing electronic signature — provided you motivate it 'in pure opportunity'
ETNIC was allowed to let BONJOUR INC cure its missing qualified electronic signature and then award the Pix promotion campaign — the Council finds the short motivation ('we regularise as a matter of opportunity') sufficient in a negotiated procedure without publication.
When four out of five bidders deviate from the zoning plan in identical fashion, the problem is not with the bidders
The Council of State suspends under extreme urgency the award of the design-and-build contract for the new Neptunus swimming pool in Ghent because TMVW declared the bids of four of the five bidders substantially irregular — after eight months of negotiations — for a zoning-plan deviation that the specifications never expressly excluded, and then refused the regularisation opportunity the specifications themselves promised.
A 'NOK' that becomes 'OK' after follow-up questions is not automatically an unlawful regularisation — if it concerns selection, not the offer itself
The Council of State dismisses Coeman Repatriëring's suspension against the award to Depannage Lybaert of the South-East towing lot, because the additional information the contracting authority requested on staff, premises and intervention vehicles did not fall under the strict regularisation rules for offers, but under the more lenient rules for requesting evidence of technical capacity.
The contracting authority that would have 'rescued' Flowbird with a question would have breached the equal treatment principle itself
The Council of State rejects Flowbird's extreme-urgency challenge against Parking Brussels' award to Be-Mobile of the Business Rules Engine contract: a 'technical note' of five pages required on pain of nullity cannot be replaced by a 114-page Technical Memorandum or a 14-page Helicopter Vision — and the contracting authority would have been wrong to ask Flowbird about it.
Hide your previous terminated contract and you lose the next one too — even if you're contesting that termination in court
The Council of State refuses to suspend the exclusion of an architectural firm by social housing company Toit & Moi based on an earlier contract terminated by another contracting authority (La Sambrienne), holding that the firm should have spontaneously disclosed the termination in its bid and submitted self-cleaning measures — even though it is contesting the termination itself before the ordinary courts.
'Clarifying' a signature mandate after the opening can be done — but if the award decision is silent about what you received, you lose the award
The Belgian Council of State suspends Defence's award of a VSAT satellite housing to Metracom because, although the mandate of the signatory had been 'clarified' after the opening of bids, the award decision did not explain what documents were received — and those documents appeared to contradict an earlier 'acte de désignation du signataire' filed by Metracom in a previous proceeding.
You won the first suspension — and you think the contracting authority is now obliged to award to you? The opposite can happen: in round two you fall out on irregularities
The Council of State rejects Fire Technics's second urgent suspension request against the Hainaut-Centre rescue zone: after a successful first suspension in February 2020, the contracting authority may withdraw its decision and issue a new award decision in which Fire Technics's bid is excluded for substantial irregularities — even if that bid was found regular in the first round.
A commitment letter from your parent company is NOT a formality — leave it out of your application and you lose the contract, even after four years of proceedings
The Council of State rejects Chantiers Allais's urgent suspension request against its non-selection for the river patrol boats: any candidate relying on the financial capacity of its parent company must include a formal commitment letter from that parent in its application — group affiliation does not suffice, and post-deadline supplements are worthless, even when the contracting authority initially missed the flaw.
'Site preparation costs spread across unit prices'? Not when the specifications say 'TP' — VMG-De Cock pays €53,376 and slips to fourth place
VMG-De Cock left item 02.00 'site preparation — general' blank, arguing the cost was already spread over all unit prices, but the specifications expressly said 'TP' (total price); the gap formula pushed the bidder from third to fourth and the Council of State refused to suspend.
Forgot the ESPD? There's no way back — even if the tender documents stay silent on the sanction
The Council of State confirms that omitting a European Single Procurement Document (ESPD/UEA) from a bid automatically renders the bid substantially irregular — even when neither the tender documents nor the information session mention that consequence.
Confirming is not the same as recalculating: how Bidfood lost its food deal with the best of intentions
The Council of State dismisses Bidfood Flanders's appeal against the City of Ghent: a clarification request from the contracting authority ('can you confirm your prices are per kg?') does not give the bidder the right to submit a new Excel with revised unit prices for 23 line items.
Admitted to negotiations ≠ your bid is compliant
The Council of State dismisses the suspension request of a vendor whose bid for a hospital laboratory information system was declared substantially irregular at the final stage — even though it had earlier been admitted to negotiations without objection.
If you ask before the deadline whether your certificate is good enough, a 'no' on paper is hard to challenge later
The Council of State dismisses an extreme-urgency suspension by a window installer who was excluded because his ATG and ISO 9001 did not match a specific quality-label requirement in the specification — precisely because he had asked the question himself six weeks earlier and received a written 'no', he could no longer invoke a defective statement of reasons.
'Yes' on the bid form and 'no' on the ESPD: not a calculation error, but a ground for exclusion
Dockx Movers lost its extreme-urgency challenge against Artesis Plantijn Hogeschool because it ticked 'yes' to subcontracting on the bid form but twice answered 'no' in the attached ESPD — a contradiction the Council qualifies as a substantial irregularity that can no longer be cured under article 34 of the Royal Decree of 18 April 2017.
Writing 'we think 13 to 16 FTE would be good' to a bidder who has 5 is not clarification — it's coaching
The Brussels Region awarded the Collecto night-taxi concession to newcomer Victor Cab, which had only 5 FTEs at offer opening, after the Region wrote that 13 to 16 FTEs 'would be a good approach' and even suggested how (article 60, interns, students) — the Council of State suspends because this falls far outside what article 48, §3 of the concession law allows.
A photo of a bicycle is not a 'description of the equipment' — and with five defects in your bid you don't get a second chance
The City of Ghent excludes SGI Security from a EUR 3 million parking-control contract because of five cumulative defects in its bid (deviating walking routes, no planning tool, only a photo of a bike, only a photo of a uniform and contradictory hourly rates) — the Council of State confirms: a contracting authority is not obliged to plug every gap in a bid with a clarification request.
Move a comma one position too far and end up €379,000 above the market — and you can't blame the contracting authority later
Renotec quoted a unit price in thousands instead of hundreds for the temporary signage on the Zelzate tunnel — €379,000, or 15% of its entire bid — and demanded that AWV correct this 'obvious material error'; the Council of State refuses, because the error was not 'apparent' and both the numeric and written-out price showed the same wrong figure.
'Correcting' a contradiction in your bid after you've seen the competitors' prices is not a material error — it breaks the equal-treatment principle
The Council of State suspends the re-award to ETS BERTRAND, because the city of Philippeville treated a contradiction in its bid (cover letter 'excl. VAT', form '€ incl. VAT' for the same figures) as a 'purely material error' — while the bidder only sent its 'clarification' after reading OCTA+'s prices in the first award decision.
A 'purely material error' is not just any error — if the contracting authority must guess to correct it, it falls outside article 96 §1
Veolia had wrongly allocated biomass cogeneration costs to the central boiler in its offer for the ULiège HVAC maintenance contract; the Council of State holds that such a misallocation is not a 'purely material error' when the contracting authority cannot redistribute without speculation — the extreme-urgency suspension is rejected, Cofely keeps the contract.
One signature short — and no second chance, even when a competitor got one
BUUR lost a contract worth nearly EUR 200,000 because its tender was signed by only one delegated director where the company's articles required two — and the Council ruled the awarding authority was under no obligation to allow regularisation, even though it had granted regularisation to another bidder at an earlier stage.
RENEWI's price went up by EUR 113,000 after 'correction' — and the file does not say how
The Belgian Council of State suspends the award of a 4-year waste management contract to RENEWI because CHR Citadelle did motivate why a correction was needed but never explained how the price was actually recalculated — and without those calculation details, a 'rectification' of EUR 113,000 may in reality be a new price offer.
Demanding insurance of 3× your tender price is allowed — the '2× rule' from the directive only applies to turnover
The Belgian Council of State dismisses FALCO's appeal and confirms that a contracting authority may require bidders' professional liability insurance to cover at least 3× the tender amount — the proportionality rule that applies to minimum-turnover requirements (max 2× the estimated contract value) is not transposable to insurance guarantees.
'Spontaneously' correcting a bid upward by 40% is allowed — provided the contracting authority explains why it is not a new offer
The Council of State suspends the award of a public works contract to LECOMTE because the municipality of Meix-devant-Virton accepted that LECOMTE corrected its bid after opening from EUR 119,973 to EUR 167,628 — an increase of nearly 40% — without any single word in the award decision explaining why this qualified as a correctable error rather than a modification of the bid.
An EUR 2,681 omission made the difference between winning and losing — and the Council of State sided with the bidder who reported it
The Council of State dismisses Bekaert's appeal against the award to Wyckaert for the construction of a police building, and confirms that the duty to report under article 81 of the Royal Decree of 18 April 2017 applies only to insurmountable defects in the contract documents — not to small omissions in the bill of quantities that a diligent bidder spots only when pricing.
A ESPD with only the odd pages scanned: a scanning slip, not grounds for exclusion
The Council of State suspends the award to Roularta because the City of Antwerp excluded Roto Smeets' bid for an incomplete ESPD (only odd pages scanned), although the scanning error resembles 'an inadvertent slip' and the equality of bidders was not at stake.
An unauthorised quantity change can't be 'corrected' — the bid must be excluded
The Council of State suspends the BIM's award to BDO because BDO had unilaterally reduced the estimated quantity in the inventory without the specifications authorising it — the contracting authority should have excluded the bid as substantially irregular instead of 'restoring' the original quantity under article 86.
Adding a correction note to your bid isn't post-opening regularisation — it's how the system is meant to work
The Council of State rejects VIABUILD's appeal: KRINKELS had attached an explanatory note 'Errors and/or omissions' to its bid from the moment of submission to correct certain items — a procedure expressly provided for in article 83, §2 of the 2011 Royal Decree, not a prohibited post-opening modification.
Refusing the government commissioner's visa is no detail — it can flip the entire ranking, and that's allowed
The Council of State rejects the extreme urgency challenge against the award of an orthopedic concession at Ghent University Hospital: after the government commissioner refused his visa on the first award report, the authority could re-evaluate, swapping the winner (V!GO) and runner-up (Aqtor!) — without the commissioner exceeding his powers.
The price on the bid form and the price in the award report differed by 60,000 euros — and nobody explained why
The Council rejects Monument Vandekerckhove's appeal against the award to PPR-Vibed (€1,752,813), but rules that the duty to state reasons was breached because the contracting authority failed to explain why PPR-Vibed's price in the award report was suddenly €59,469 lower than at the opening session — and orders the Flemish Community to pay costs.
Three documents may be requested after opening — provided they add nothing to what the bid already substantively committed to
The Council rejects the extreme-urgency appeal of THV IJzerpoort against the award of the Nieuwpoort storm-surge barrier (€50,108,070.70 incl. VAT, awarded to Herbosch-Kiere – Jan De Nul) over the post-opening request to other bidders for three documents (10-year LED-module warranty certificate, lift maintenance contract proposals, fire-detection certification): article 96, § 4 of the 2011 Award Royal Decree allows this where the documents bring no change to the bid or merely provide 'additional assurance' for commitments the bidder had already entered into by signing.
An item on the Synergrid list is a combination, not a single component — swap the driver and you're no longer on the list
The Council rejects Schreder's extreme-urgency application against Eandis' decision to declare all seven bids for LED street lighting (lots 1, 2 and 3) substantially irregular because the offered combination of luminaire, LED module and driver does not appear as such on the Synergrid 005 list — even though the separate driver is itself 005-certified.
If you ask one bidder to clarify an 'abnormal' offer, you must ask every bidder with the same ambiguity — selective questioning is unequal treatment
The Council of State suspends a Brussels Environment Institute award because only Oneliner was questioned about its 'abnormally high' translation volumes, while another selected bidder had explicitly not committed in its own offer either — selective questioning over an ambiguous tender clause is unequal treatment of bidders.
A publication error in the Belgian Official Gazette ('annual meeting' instead of 'board of directors') does not invalidate an offer — what counts is the actual mandate
The Council of State refuses to suspend the City of Aalst's award of 5.2 million euros of sewerage works to the joint venture Audenaert-Audebo, because an erroneously drafted Official Gazette extract does not undo the fact that Samuel Auquier's power of attorney had been granted — by the competent body, the board of directors of Audebo NV — long before the offer was filed.
From 30/30 to 12/30 in the BAFO — when the contracting authority drops a hint and you ignore it
The Council of State refuses to suspend the award of the MIVB Erasmus metro depot (77.98 million euros) to THV CFE-Blaton, ruling that in a negotiated procedure with BAFO it is normal for scores to swing dramatically between the first offer and the final offer — particularly when one bidder responds to a mid-procedure signal from the contracting authority and the other does not.
Two foundation rigs for 664 days — 'planning risk' costs Jan De Nul second place, and the 35-point gap kills the rest of the case
The Council of State refuses to suspend the award to THV CFE-Blaton, ruling that an execution period of 664 days with only 2 foundation rigs could reasonably be flagged as a 'planning risk', and that a 35-point gap with the winner deprives the petitioners of standing on every ground that — even at best — cannot put them in first place.
A forgotten methodology document is not an 'arithmetic error' — even when the contracting authority already knows the content
The lowest bidder received 0/10 for technical centre maintenance because the methodology document was missing; the Council of State refuses to qualify this as a material error and confirms that regularisation would alter the offer — which is forbidden.
Two valid scoring errors in your offer count for nothing if the points gap remains too wide to close
Besix Park persuades the Council of State on two scoring errors — three wrongly deducted points on award criterion 1 and a possibly understated score on criterion 4 — but loses anyway, because even after correction 82.24 points cannot catch Apcoa's 90.
Maintenance during the warranty period is not a 'service contract' — Skoda eliminated for 175 MIVB trams
The Council of State rejects Skoda's extreme-urgency suspension against its non-selection for the MIVB framework agreement for 175 trams: Skoda's satisfaction certificates concerned the supply and warranty-period service, while the third selection criterion required a reference to a separate service contract on life-cycle management — two different things that Skoda had bundled into one.
A live software demo is allowed — but the bidder cannot score for features that surface for the first time during that demo
The Council of State annuls the award to Randstad of the HYGEA temp-staffing contract because IDEA scored Randstad on two software features — integrated priority lists and cancellation up to 15 minutes before deployment — that were not in the bid itself but only emerged during the product demo a month after bid opening.
The lowest bidder loses a €105,982 school renovation because seven mandatory documents were missing — and the specifications offered no second chance
The Council of State dismisses the suspension request against the award of the renovation of the KA Berchem classrooms to Creative Resin Solutions for €105,982.08: the fact that the contracting authority allowed the winner to add a missing reference list but not Verboven-Reynders does not breach the principle of equal treatment — a bidder who omitted seven mandatory selection documents is not in a 'comparable situation' to one who only missed a single formality.
Cutting five 'superfluous' sub-studies from the winning offer to make the price acceptable? That is not correcting a clerical error — that is rewriting the offer
The Council of State suspends the award of the design contract for the redevelopment of municipal buildings in Schoten to Jef Van Oevelen, because the municipality — without any formal procedure and without applying the same exercise to the other bidders — removed five 'unrequested' sub-studies (€96,075.95) from his lump-sum price, thereby lowering Van Oevelen's offer from €506,000 to €409,924 and elevating him to the top of the ranking against what the analysis report showed.
Two equal scores of 90/100, another 'concrete case' to break the tie — and the Council annuls: that's adding a new award criterion
The Council of State annuls the award to Luxtax for transporting the National Orchestra's instruments, because the contracting authority — faced with two tied scores of 90/100 — did not follow the procedure of article 101 §3 of the Placement Decree (request for improvement from the two tied bidders) but instead asked all four bidders for a price on a new monthly schedule and used that to build a second comparison table, which amounts to adding an award criterion during the procedure.
Missing 100 ml is a detail, missing 700 ml is an irregular bid — proportionality cuts both ways
The Council of State rejects SCA Hygiene Products' challenge to the award of a public welfare centre's nursing products framework to Ontex and rules that a 700 ml absorption shortfall against a 3,800 ml specification is materially different from a 100 ml shortfall — no breach of equal treatment.
You can't count the same 8 staff for two different personnel profiles — or you lose your selection
The Council of State dismisses K. Verstraete & Zoon's annulment appeal against the €6.5 million road-lighting contract awarded to nv VSE because Verstraete used the same 8 staff for both 'defects/breakdowns' and 'new construction', while the specifications required 29 separate profiles for lot 5.
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This page shows all rulings of the Council of State (Belgium's supreme administrative court) on regularisation in public procurement. Each ruling is summarized by TenderWolf in plain language, with a legal lesson and a practical question to ask yourself. View all rulings →