City Code Section
- A. General. To protect the integrity of the competitive Solicitation process and to assure fair treatment of Offerors, the City should carefully consider whether to permit a waiver, correction or withdrawal of an Offer for certain mistakes.
- B. Treatment of Mistakes. Errors in judgment do not permit an Offeror to correct or withdraw an Offer. Mistakes that constitute a minor informality may be waived or corrected. Mistakes that constitute clerical errors may be corrected or withdrawn in the City’s discretion pursuant to this rule.
- C. City notification. If the City believes the Offer contains a mistake the City shall notify the Offeror, note the apparent mistake and request that the Offeror verify the Offer in writing, or by electronic transmission within one business day after notification.
- D. Failure of Offeror to Respond. If the Offeror fails to respond within one business day after notification of the apparent mistake, the City shall consider the Offer as submitted unless the amount of the Offer is so far out of line with the amounts of other bids received, or with the amount estimated by the City, or there are other indications of error so clear, as to reasonably justify the conclusion or that acceptance of the Offer would be unfair to the Offeror or to other bona fide Offerors, in which case the City shall be entitled to reject the Offer. The City may extend the time for response for good cause shown.
- E. Verification. If the Offeror verifies its Offer, the City must consider the Offer as originally submitted. However, in fairness to other Offerors, verification does not preclude the City from rejecting the Offer if it is clear that a mistake has been made and the City determines the intended Offer is not evident.
- F. Minor Informality. If the Offeror verifies its Offer, and the City sees no reason for rejection, the City may waive or permit the Offeror to correct a mistake that constitutes a minor informality. A minor informality is a matter of form, rather than substance, that is evident on the face of the Offer and which can be corrected or waived without prejudice to the public or other Offerors. Examples of a minor informality include a failure to:
- 1. Return the correct number of Signed Offers or the correct number of other documents required by the Solicitation Document;
- 2. Sign the Offer in the designated block, provided, however, that a Signature appears elsewhere in the Offer that evidences the Offeror’s intent to be bound; or
- 3. Acknowledge receipt of an Addendum to the Solicitation Document, provided it is clear on the face of the Offer that the Offeror received the Addendum and intended to be bound by its terms.
- G. Clerical Mistakes. If the Offeror does not verify its Offer, but contends a clerical mistake caused a different Offer than intended to be submitted, or verifies the Offer but contends a clerical mistake should be corrected within a portion of the Offer, the City may in its discretion permit correction if the conditions of this section are met.
- 1. Only clerical mistakes can be corrected. A clerical mistake is not a mistake of judgment. Examples of clerical mistakes include typographical mistakes, errors in extending unit prices, transposition errors, arithmetical errors, misplacement of a decimal point, and instances in which the intended correct price is evident by simple arithmetic calculations.
- 2. If correction of the Offer would result in displacement of one or more lower Offers submitted by other Offerors, the correction is permitted if, and only if, both the existence of the mistake and the Offer actually intended are ascertainable from the Solicitation Document and the Offer itself.
- 3. If correction of the Offer would not result in the displacement of one or more lower Offers submitted by other Offerors, correction may be permitted if the Offeror provides the City with clear and convincing supporting evidence of the mistake and intended Offer within two business days after the City’s initial notification of the mistake. The City may extend the time for response for good cause shown.
- a. Supporting evidence shall include all pertinent evidence, such as the Offeror’s file copy of its Offer, the original worksheets and other data used in preparing the Offer, subcontractors’ quotations, if any, and any other evidence that establishes the existence of a clerical mistake, the manner in which it occurred and the Offer actually intended.
- b. The closer the corrected Offer is to the next lowest Offer the greater the need for the City to be sure that it has clear and convincing evidence that permits a correction to ensure the integrity of the competitive process.