Bid Withdrawal Changes Coming This July

This year's General Assembly session resulted in changes to the bid withdrawal provisions of Code Section 2.2-4330 of the Virginia Public Procurement Act. The major change lies in the procedures. There are still two procedures. The first stays the same; allowing the bidder to give notice in writing of a bid mistake claim within 2 business days after the conclusion of the bid opening procedure. The second, however, changes for cases when the public body opens bids one day following the fixed submission time; shortening the notice period from 1 day to 2 hours. The statute's change also now allows bidders to request that its working papers, which it is required to submit, be considered trade secretes or proprietary information. The statute also now includes a maximum timeframe of 5 days for the public body to notify the bidder of its withdrawal decision, and now requires the public body to return the bidder's work papers and any copies thereof with the decision notice.