How to submit a sealed bid

Read this before you start. The most common and most expensive mistake is
at the very end.

Uploading is not submitting

Your files being uploaded does not mean you have bid.

Uploading sends us your encrypted documents. Submitting is a separate
button that you press afterwards. Until you press it, you have not bid,
and at the closing time you will not be in the competition.

The screen tells you which state you are in. It says "uploaded, not
submitted" until you finish. Believe it.

Start early

You can upload days before the closing date. There is no advantage to
waiting and there is a large disadvantage: a slow connection on the last
afternoon is the commonest reason a good supplier misses a deadline.

Uploading early costs you nothing. You can replace your files as many
times as you like before the closing time.

If your connection drops

It will resume. Files go up in small pieces and the system remembers which
pieces arrived. Reconnect and carry on from where you stopped.

Steps

1. Sign in and open the tender.
2. Read the terms, and acknowledge any changes we have issued.
3. Upload your documents. Watch them reach "complete".
4. Press submit.
5. Download your receipt and keep it.

After you submit

You cannot change a submitted bid. You can replace it with a new one
before the closing time, and you can withdraw it.

Both leave a record. That is deliberate: it means nobody can make your bid
disappear either.

What we can and cannot see

Before the closing time, nobody at LEAT can read your bid. Not the
procurement officer, not the person running the tender.

We can see that a file arrived and how big it is. We cannot see a price, a
document, or anything inside.

Questions about the tender

Ask through the system. We answer every eligible bidder at the same time,
and we normally do not say who asked.

If your question means the terms have to change, we issue a formal change
to everybody and you may need to acknowledge it before you can submit.