Mr. Jim Breslin:

As I said, I was not involved in this instance but the normal course of events is that a request for tenders is issued, stating the required specification and what we want to be delivered. In this case, companies must give an indication that they have the requisite ability to deliver. They put forward their capacity to undertake a job of this scale and get short-listed. In this situation, five companies for the main contract were short-listed. In advance of any tenders being received, the people who are going to award the contract come up with a marking scheme in line with the request for tenders they have issued. That would involve a combination of quality and cost. My understanding in this situation was that the first thing done when the tenders were opened entailed a sealed process pertaining to quality. One had to meet the quality criteria before being evaluated for price. Those companies that met the quality criteria were evaluated on the price they were tendering, and marks were awarded based on that.