(7 hours ago)Unber43 wrote To me GCT winning bid should be made public and see if anyone is willing to under bid it.
For instance the 71 perhaps GNE say they needed £100K a year to run and GCT needed 97K, really GNE should have had the opportunity to counter bid and also what GNE can bring to the table for the 71 than GCT
Presumably to avoid ending up in court, you'd apply this approach to all initially successful tenders, not just those won by GCT?
If you've ever been involved in procurement and bid evaluation you'll be aware how time consuming and costly this approach would be with evaluators then having to evaluate multiple rounds of bids for every lot. Given the criticism of the tardiness of the award confirmations as it is, and cost ineffectivenss aside, I very much doubt it would even be feasible (if it could be done legally and fairly) on the stupid 12 month contracts we seem to be stuck with.
(6 hours ago)OrangeArrow49 wrote I think it's a shame counter bidding isn't an option. Obviously it's difficult because potentially operators could be petty and only undercut if GCT win, for example.
But in the end it would save money and hopefully operators would actually want the routes and run them well.
Presumably operators already submit their lowest bid for the contract, to actually get the work and the income.
Only if you ignore the inherent costs in running such a ridiculous process.