Defence forced to revise printer tender

The Defence Materiel Office will reissue its request for tender for Canon PIXMA iP100 printers to comply with Commonwealth procurement guidelines (CPG).

Division 2, sections 8.47-8.49 of the guidelines bars agencies from prescribing a particular trademark or trade name, patent, copyright, design or type, specific origin, producer, or supplier, unless there is no other sufficiently precise or intelligible way of describing the requirement.

Contrary to the CPG, Defence sought bids for a specific brand and product - Canon PIXMA iP100 - in its open tender performance specifications.

Defence intends to procure at least nine such Canon iP100 printers, according to its spokesperson.

Furthermore Defence's RFT classified the Canon PIXMA iP100 as "essential" and that a failure for tenderers to offer this specific product meant their bids will be "excluded from further evaluation".

Alerted to the CPG breach by iTnews, a Defence spokesman said 99 percent of the contract's value was for a military standard ruggedized printer.

Those military standard units were exempted from the CPG under chapter 1.2 of the Defence Procurement Policy Manual, he said, and the PIXMA iP100 was the “only suitable in-service product that has been certified for use to support the overall requirement”.

But the request for tender also called for a Canon PIXMA iP100 commercial grade bubble inkjet printer, expected to represented one percent of the total value of the requirement.

Without an elaborated exemption the RFT would breach the Government’s mandatory procurement guidelines.

Defence informed iTnews the tender would be updated to ensure its exemption from Division 2 of the CPGs is clearly reflected within the Conditions of Tender.