Why we exist
We went looking for a tidy national statistic on tenders rejected for non-compliance. It doesn't exist. So we read the council evaluation reports ourselves. What's in them is worse than a statistic.
Wollongong
Wollongong City Council received six tenders to replace the roof on the Fairy Meadow Community Centre (T21/04, April 2021). Four were found non-conforming because they "did not complete or return the mandatory returnable schedules". Only the remaining two went to the assessment panel. They didn't lose the tender. They were never evaluated.
Ordinary Meeting of Council, 19 April 2021, Item 16 — Council's own report (PDF)
Not because their price was wrong. Not because their workmanship was bad. Not because somebody scored higher. They didn't complete the tender properly.
Six tendered. Four never reached evaluation.
The reports we reviewed
Every one of these is a preventable submission error — a missing schedule, an incomplete pricing form, a document not attached. We've left out anything that was about price, specification or contract terms, anything where the report doesn't say why, and anything we can't link you to. Every row below is the council's own report.
| Buyer | State | Bids | Knocked out | Rate | What went wrong |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wollongong City Council | NSW | 6 | 4 | 67% | Mandatory returnable schedules not completed or returned (T21/04, Apr 2021) |
| Golden Plains Shire | VIC | 2 | 1 | 50% | Compulsory breakdown of rates missing from the pricing submission (Feb 2019) |
| Wyndham City Council (1) | VIC | 6 | 1 | 17% | Required schedules and documents not submitted (C1817/17, Feb 2017) |
| Wyndham City Council (2) | VIC | 4 | 1 | 25% | Required schedules and documents not submitted (C1811/17, Mar 2017) |
| Total | 18 | 7 | 39% | All preventable before submission | |
We searched for reports that mention non-conformance, so this sample runs high and 39% is not a national average. Six more reports we've read aren't shown because we can't yet link you to them; they go in when we can. MidCoast (former Greater Taree, 2015) set aside 9 of 17 bids for missing returnable schedules or unacceptable conditions — the report doesn't split the two, so it isn't counted either. We're building the unbiased version now — a hundred-plus evaluation reports chosen without regard to outcome, across five states. When it's done it goes here, whatever it says.
Council agendas and minutes, all public — each buyer in the table links to its report. We never name the businesses involved.
Councils tell you this themselves. Sutherland Shire warns that failing to answer all returnable schedules can make a tender non-conforming. Campbelltown defines a non-conforming tender as one whose schedules weren't completed as required. Yarra Ranges publishes a checklist — signed form, pricing schedule, every criterion, OHS documents, licences, insurance certificates, addenda, declarations — and says missing any of it can knock you out. This isn't a problem we invented. It's one procurement teams already warn about.
The other failure
West Tamar Council rejected a tender because the truck offered couldn't meet the suspension and differential-lock specification. That contractor didn't need help writing a better tender. They needed someone to tell them not to tender.
A licence you don't hold. An insurance limit you can't meet. Equipment that doesn't meet the spec. A completion date you can't make. Blisters reads the tender before you do and says so, with the clause it's in — before you spend a Sunday on it.
Wollongong's four. Eligible, capable, and never read, because a schedule was missing or a pricing form was wrong. This is the failure Blisters is built to make impossible: every mandatory item is a light, and nothing exports red.
Eligible, conforming, submitted. That's all any bidder can control. Blisters doesn't tell you whether you'll win — nobody can. It tells you whether you're in the fight, and makes having a crack cheap enough that you should.
Two tendered. One missed a schedule. One left.
Two bidders
Golden Plains Shire received two tenders. Both had the hard stuff in order — OHS, insurance, risk, environmental, quality. One didn't provide the compulsory breakdown of rates. Eliminated. Only one business was ever evaluated.
That doesn't mean the survivor wins — a council can reject every bid, negotiate, or retender. But competitively it's a different job. Your first task isn't to beat every tenderer. It's to be standing when the evaluation starts.
Blisters makes sure yours is the one still standing.
The principle
We stop you wasting time on tenders you can't win, and make it ridiculously easy to have a crack at the ones you can. Once you've decided to have a crack, we make damn sure you're not one of the bidders knocked out before the race starts.
That's a deliberate limit. A tool that scores your "winnability" trains you to skip jobs you could have won and to expect the ones it liked. We won't do that. If you're eligible and it's worth an hour, bid. Blisters just turned the six-hour version into the one-hour version.