ABSTRACT
It is quite common for organisations which require particular goods or services to invite suppliers to ‘tender’ for them. The practice is either to prepare a shortlist of suppliers (perhaps those with which the organisation has dealt in the past) and to invite those on the list to tender or, alternatively, to place an advertisement in an appropriate publication (newspaper, trade journal, etc) inviting any interested supplier to tender. Such an advertisement will almost invariably be an invitation to treat. The customer organisation will send out particulars of tender to the interested supplier. The supplier will then tender in accordance with the required specifications. For example, the customer may want tenders for the supply of certain office supplies. The supplies will be listed, for example, 50 reams of A4-size photocopying paper, 10 reams of A3-size photocopying paper, 5,000 A4-size plain brown envelopes, etc. The tender may be a one-off, per week, per month, etc. This will be specified. The tender may further specify an exact quality of the items required.
