Nedelino Municipality has selected ERA STROY-RENT Ltd as the contractor for a public procurement contract covering the supply and installation of five modular outpatient clinics in the villages of Izgrev, Elenka, Varlino, Garnati and Kochani.
The project is financed under investment C12.I7, “Development of Outpatient Care”, as part of Bulgaria’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan. Its aim is to provide premises for outpatient medical services in communities with limited access to healthcare.
The procurement began with two bids. By the time the financial offers were opened, however, only one bidder remained.
Competition eliminated at the technical stage
On paper, the procedure was open and the main award criterion was the lowest price. In practice, the winning bid was never compared with a competing financial offer.
The other participant, ET TINKA-47 TINKA MOSTANEVA from Zlatograd, was eliminated at the technical evaluation stage, leaving its price offer unopened.
According to the evaluation committee’s published report, the bidder had failed to specify the dimensions and opening direction of the doors in the modules, as well as the exact positioning of internal plumbing outlets and the connection points to the external networks.
The committee concluded that these omissions could not be corrected through additional clarification, as doing so would have resulted in a substantial change to the bidder’s original technical proposal.
As a result, the only competitor was eliminated from all five lots of the procurement.
The project involves specialised premises, including a doctor’s office, treatment room and accessible sanitary facilities, making technical precision an essential requirement. At the same time, the outcome raises the question of whether a strict formal interpretation of the tender documentation has deprived the municipality of the opportunity to achieve greater financial efficiency through genuine price competition.
A newly established company relying on borrowed experience
The profile of the winning contractor is also noteworthy.
ERA STROY-RENT Ltd was registered in February 2024, with its registered office in Momchilgrad and share capital of just €51. The company has a broad stated business scope, including trade, construction services and property rental.
As a newly established company, it has limited publicly available history of completed projects or financial reporting.
The tender documents show that the winning bidder did not demonstrate the required experience using its own resources. To meet the technical and professional capacity requirements, ERA STROY-RENT relied on the capacity of a third party – the Burgas-based company ERFA BUILD Ltd, which is also listed as a subcontractor.
It was this company that declared relevant experience from the previous three years, which was sufficient for the evaluation committee to accept the bid.
ERFA BUILD was registered in 2020 and its publicly documented portfolio is mainly associated with prefabricated and modular houses.
A further check of specialist publications, including reports by the Construction Journal, reveals another curious detail: the company appeared among those initially registered in the Central Professional Register of Builders in 2024, but among the companies listed for removal from the register in January 2026.
A price almost at the ceiling
ERA STROY-RENT offered to carry out the work in three of the villages for €28,700 excluding VAT each, and in the remaining two for €28,800 excluding VAT.
The total value of the contracts is €143,700 excluding VAT.
The published estimated value of the procurement was €144,363.10.
The difference between the maximum projected expenditure and the winning bid is therefore less than half a per cent – just €663.
With the second bidder eliminated before its financial offer was opened, the municipality ultimately had no competing price against which to test whether the selected bid represented the most economically advantageous outcome.
