Project officials deliberately can fail to provide adequate notice for companies to prepare bids or proposals in order to benefit a favored bidder, often as the result of corruption. In such cases the favored bidder is given advance notice of the procurement and adequate time and information to prepare its bid.
Inadequate notice can include:
- Publishing the notice during a holiday period, limiting the time available to prepare bids;
- Refusing to grant reasonable requests for extension of time to prepare bids or proposals;
- Limiting the notice to small, local publications or other publications of limited circulation;
- Providing insufficient information in the published notices, e.g., failing to state the time and place to submit bids;
- Holding pre-bid conferences too close to the bid due date to permit modifications to bids;
- Failing to provide notice of changes to the bid specifications to all bidders;
- Failing to provide any notice at all, and preparing fictitious ad copy to conceal the scheme.
This red flag can indicate the following schemes:
Click on the schemes listed above to see more information on each scheme, a more complete listing of their red flags and steps to determine if the schemes are actually present.