Tenderscan didn’t slumber during the long summer holidays, and apparently neither did ERWAT – State Owned Company: East Rand Water.

ERWAT decided that the best time to make a huge tender public was Thursday 20 December, which they published exclusively on their own website, with the compulsory briefing date only 4 days later: on Monday 24th December!

This is the offending tender:  CREATE AND IMPLEMENT A STRATEGY FOR THE MANAGEMENT OF THE GREEN DROP SYSTEM

Bid Number: ERW201206/TNDR-012

Publishing a tender so close to it’s compulsory briefing date is completely unacceptable, even by South Africa’s National Treasury Board’s generous standards. Never mind that those 4 days were during the weekend before Christmas when the whole country would have been on leave! Everyone who was not scrutinising the ERWAT website on the weekend before Christmas and making travel plans to Kempton Park (where the briefing was), was disqualified for this tender.

Clearly this tender was a Christmas present intended for someone in particular, and not meant for the majority of the country.

We’d like to award ERWAT’s extreme stealth by giving them the prestigious  ”Prize for the Sneakiest Tender in 2012″. Well done ERWAT!

We’d be interested to know of any “Sneakiest Tender” contenders that you came across during 2012 – let us know!