Bridge over troubled mortar

The saga of Maesdu bridge is set to run and run.  The excellent Jason Weyman, on his blog, reveals

"The agreed price of the winning tender (Dawnus Construction Ltd) is actually £2.3 Million.

Now I know the local authority is coming under close scrutiny on this and I know this information will add fuel to the arguments. But this information is important and will have been announced at some point. The fact it came out on Tuesday evening, means that it is public information and I know at least 1 of the businesses would have passed this information further afield. I know this will give officers more grief but it is something that needs to be said, and now I know the information is in the public domain then I have to post on it.

So the projected overspend is projected to be £738k, This has to be found from within the Capital Expenditure budget. As you can imagine this was one of a few quotes and the adjudication was split between cost and quality of the tender. So you can imagine what the values of other tenders would have been.

There are several interesting aspects to this saga, but one which seems extremely odd is the sentence in Cllr Weyman's aricle which reads thus:

As you can imagine this was one of a few quotes and the adjudication was split between cost and quality of the tender, so you can imagine what the values of other tenders would have been.

But this seems rather odd.  When bids are invited, they are done so in full cognisance of the specifications of the building or project. Thus, the company bidding would have known what they were required to do.  It would, therefore, have been appropriate to select the lowest tender based on the builder being aware of the requirements.

It's bridge.  It has to carry traffic and it has to last for many years. It shouldn't fall down. They're not being invited to tender for the  construction of a Hadron collider, or a Fusion power plant.  It's a bridge.  We've been building the damn things for about 10 000 years.  What's the problem?"

Now we know the council officers will say there are all sorts of things which need to be taken into account, but that doesn't really make any sense. Essentially, specs are drawn up, tenders invited on those specs, and the lowest bids accepted.  Unless, of course, there's something we don't know.