QUESTION

I am looking for guidance on the legalities of retendering a construction project that was previously tendered but all tenders were rejected as the costs were significantly more than the Engineer’s cost estimate and therefore over the allocated budget. The opinion is split within my office and our consultants on whether the project can be retendered without alteration to the original tender package or whether the scope has to significantly changed in order to retender. And if this is the case what constitutes a significant change? One opinion is that a change in schedule i.e. to the next year should be a significant enough change to retender.

COMMENT

The GCs allow the owner to reject all bids, which they probably should do if they don’t have the funds to proceed.