Clerical Mistakes

If you make an obvious, or apparent, clerical mistake in the submission of a bid, the contracting officer is permitted to correct the clerical mistake. The FAR provides the following:

14.407 – 2 Apparent clerical mistakes.

(a) Any clerical mistake, apparent on its face in the bid, may be corrected by the contracting officer before award. The contracting officer first shall obtain from the bidder a verification of the bid intended. Examples of apparent mistakes are —

(1)Obvious misplacement of a decimal point;

(2)Obviously incorrect discounts (for example, 1 percent 10 days, 2 percent 20 days, 5 percent 30 days);

(3)Obvious reversal of the price f.o.b. destination and price f.o.b. origin; and

(4)Obvious mistake in designation of the unit.

(b)Correction of the bid shall be effected by attaching the verification to the original bid and a copy of the verification to the duplicate bid. Correction shall not be made on the face of the bid; however, it shall be reflected in the award document

(c) Correction of bids submitted by electronic data interchange shall be effected by including in the electronic solicitation file the original bid, the verification request, and the bid verification.

Updated: July 24, 2018