Facilities Management Evaluation: Self-Declarations, a Subsidiary's Fine and an Offset Claim

A cannot be excluded simply for using the permitted route. If the tender allows evidence of sustainability performance and reserves a right to verify, a signed self-declaration is a valid response. Rejecting it for being a self-declaration would be unequal treatment unless the documents required third-party evidence.

Two things follow:

• Score the evidence, not the assertion. Where the criterion is 'evidence of sustainability performance', a bare declaration with no policies, audits or data earns little. That is a scoring decision, documented against published sub-criteria, not a disqualification.
• Exercise the verification right on the winner. Before award, require the leading bidder to substantiate: policies, grievance mechanism, audit reports, subcontractor list. If verification fails, the reserved right allows the panel to act - but the same check must apply to whichever bidder wins, and bidders must have been told that verification could affect award.

Document that the same test was applied to all five. The risk here is not Bidder A; it is a challenge alleging the panel invented requirements mid-evaluation. If the documents are silent on the consequences of verification, take legal advice before using it as a ground to reject.

Work through relevance, attribution and remediation.

• Relevance: wage underpayment in a cleaning subsidiary is directly relevant to the labour practices being procured. That makes it material, unlike, say, a pollution offence at an unrelated logistics arm.
• Attribution: the subsidiary is not the bidding entity. The panel must ask whether the bidder controls the subsidiary, whether staff or management overlap, and whether the bidder's own systems would have prevented the conduct.
• Remediation: a €120,000 fine three years ago with evidence of repayment, systems change and no recurrence is a different fact from an unresolved finding. Ask for the remediation record.
• Proportionality and consistency: exclusion must rest on a ground in the tender documents or applicable law, and must be applied to every bidder alike. If the documents allow exclusion for grave misconduct, apply that test to all five and record the reasoning. If they do not, use the finding to lower the sustainability score and to set contract conditions.

The panel should minute what was found, what was asked, what was answered and why the weight given was proportionate. That minute is the defence.

Ambition is not evidence. Score against the published criterion, which asks for evidence of sustainability performance. A 2027 carbon-neutral claim supported only by offsets, with no baseline, boundary, methodology or verification, is an assertion.

Clarify, don't dismiss. Within the clarification deadline ask for: the baseline year and emissions boundary (scope 1, 2 and relevant scope 3); the reduction pathway in tCO2e, separately from offsets; the offset standard, registry and retirement evidence; the assurance provider; and how the claim is reflected in delivery of this contract. Ask all bidders equivalent questions so treatment is equal.

Score on the answer. A credible response shows measured reductions in the services being bought - fleet, building energy, waste, cleaning chemicals - with a verified residual offset. A response that is mostly offsets with no reduction should score low on evidence. Neither should be disqualified if the tender did not require a specific methodology; the panel's job is to differentiate, not rewrite the rules.

Record why the score was given. If the claim later proves unfounded, the contract should carry reporting and remediation obligations - which is the next tender's design task.