What the tender documents say is what counts — second thoughts about what you 'meant' come too late
The Council of State suspends the award of a framework contract for temporary staff because CHR Haute Senne disqualified X-CARE Wallonie for an ISO 9001 certificate expiring eight days after bid opening — while the tender documents only required the certificate to be valid 'at the time of bid submission'.
What happened?
CHR Haute Senne, a hospital with sites across Hainaut and Walloon Brabant, launched a European open procedure in October 2025 for a framework contract to supply temporary nursing and paramedical staff. The tender required four selection criteria. One: 'Presentation at the time of bid submission of a certificate showing that the candidate has been audited and certified to ISO 9001:2015'. Four bidders submitted offers on 2 December 2025, including X-CARE Wallonie. On opening, the hospital noticed that X-CARE's ISO certificate was valid only until 10 December 2025 — eight days later. After exchanges, X-CARE produced a quote from SGS and an audit schedule for April 2026, but no firm date for the new certificate. On 26 February 2026 the hospital disqualified X-CARE because it 'could not show that the certificate valid until 10 December had been renewed', and awarded the contract to three competitors. X-CARE sought urgent suspension. The Council ruled that the tender required the certificate to be valid at the time of bid submission — and on 2 December, it was. By demanding that the certificate also remain valid through the award decision or the initial bid validity period, CHR added a condition that was not in the tender documents. The hospital's argument that this was 'obvious' given the nature of ISO certificates was rejected — those concerns could have justified a contractual performance clause, not an implicit broadening of a selection criterion. The hospital's second argument — that the certificate actually belonged to another company — was dismissed as a posteriori reasoning not present in the contested decision. Suspension granted.
Why does this matter?
Contracting authorities sometimes read their own tender documents 'in the spirit of what they meant' instead of what they actually wrote. If you set a threshold at 'at bid submission', you cannot retroactively claim 'we obviously also meant during performance'. For bidders, this confirms a concrete right: a certificate valid on the opening date is enough — even if it expires two weeks later. Still, if your certificate is about to expire, anticipate the misunderstanding: attach proof of pending renewal to your offer.
The lesson
Before disqualifying a bidder, lay your decision next to the tender document and check what your criterion literally requires — not what you would have liked to mean. If you wrote 'valid certificate at bid submission', that is the threshold. If you want continuous certification during performance, write it explicitly as a performance condition.
Ask yourself
Read the selection criterion word for word. Does my disqualification ground appear literally in the text? Or am I adding a requirement that is not there ('must also remain valid until…', 'must also cover the bid validity period…')? If I cannot point to the words in the tender, I cannot disqualify on that ground.
About this database
The Council of State (Raad van State / Conseil d'État) is Belgium's supreme administrative court. In disputes over public procurement — from contract awards to tenderer exclusions — the Council of State is the final arbiter. The rulings in this database are summarised by TenderWolf in plain language, with practical lessons for tenderers and contracting authorities. View all rulings →