The Unresponsive Bid
The most frequent errors made by firms in submitting a bid to the government are omitting something required, adding something not wanted, or changing a mandatory provision. All these errors produce the same response from contracting agencies: "You are non-responsive, and your bid is rejected! "
The Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) require that, to be considered for award, a bid must comply in all material respects with the solicitation issued by the government. (FAR 14.301). From this simple requirement, we get the concept of non-responsive bids. So, what kind of errors can get your bid rejected as non-responsive?
Do all errors, no matter how slight, require rejecting a bid? No, as you see from the regulation discussed above, only "material errors" cause a bid to be rejected. For example, if you omitted your ZIP code but your address was otherwise correct, this omission would likely not be "material" since a contract could be entered into without the ZIP code, and the competition would not have been tainted.
The lessons to take away from this are that both the solicitation and your bid are legal documents, and when you make errors, you may not get the chance to fix them. When you vary from the solicitation's specific instructions, you do so at your own risk.
If you have any questions about the bidding process or a particular solicitation
(or about this topic in general), contact your nearest North Carolina PTAC counselor.