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| Clarus Ltd requests Market Court evaluation of Forestry Development Centre Tapio's 3M€ decision | Aug 27, 2007 Clarus Ltd is requesting an evaluation from the Market Court regarding the procurement decision made by the Forestry Development Centre Tapio. Tapio's procurement entails financial and HR services. In the decision-making, the costs were inaccurately estimated due to the fact that some of the required costs were absent from the competitor's quotation. "Had the competing offer included the missing costs, the quotation from Clarus would have been 400,000€ lower", states Janne Blomqvist, CEO for Clarus. "If the quotations had been equitably processed, we would have come out on top according to the criteria defined in the request for quotation", Blomqvist continues. The quotation of Clarus Ltd was based on the request for quotation sent by the Forestry Development Centre Tapio; the request stated that the tender must include all costs. According to the request, anyone who sent a quotation was required to inform about all expenses that fell outside the total costs. Clarus's offer encompassed all costs, whereas the competitive offer's total costs had excluded considerable expenditures. These expenditures were ignored in the comparison between quotations, which led to the slight advantage of the competing offer. Forestry Development Centre Tapio arranged the bidding competition based on authorization received from regional forestry centers. However, each forestry center will be making the final procurement decision independently. The forestry centers would achieve considerable cost savings with the help of services described in the call for tenders. "As the processing times in the Market Court are extremely long, it appears that the sought cost savings unfortunately cannot be attained within the desired time frame. Immediately after hearing of the decision, we made a request to rectify the matter. Since this didn’t happen, we saw no other option but to submit the bidding contest to the evaluation of the Market Court", says Blomqvist. Forestry Centre Tapio has made the commitment of postponing the decision execution until the Market Court has processed the issue. According to Finnish statute 1274/2005 pertaining to forestry centers and the forestry development center, Tapio's main objective is to develop and coordinate the national activities and co-operation of the forestry centers. The regional forestry centers and Forestry Development Centre Tapio fall under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, and they are in the ministry's object program. They were founded on a special enactment (Act on the Forestry Centers and Forestry Development Centre Tapio (1474/1995)), and are government subsidy organizations. Additional information:
Laura Karotie
Janne Blomqvist |
