Qualification documents are the documents that show the tenderer is in a position to carry out the work. For a foreign tenderer the difficulty is that the document from its own country does not always have an exact counterpart in Türkiye. Here translation is a matter not only of language but of matching institutions.
Two main headings
Economic and financial qualification shows the tenderer's financial strength: balance sheet information, turnover and the bank reference come under this heading. Professional and technical qualification shows experience and capacity: the work experience certificate, the lists of staff and machinery, and quality certificates are gathered here.
The problem of equivalent documents
In the foreign tenderer's country the trade registry may be kept by a different body, and work experience may be evidenced by a different document. In translation the name of the document is given as it stands in the source language, followed by an explanation of which body issued it and what function it serves. The name of the Turkish document is not used directly, because that would amount to treating the two documents as the same.
Date requirement
For some documents there is a requirement that they be issued after the date of the tender notice. This requirement relates to the document itself. A newly dated translation of an old document does not satisfy it; the document has to be obtained again. This is the cause of delay that corporate buyers meet most often.
Carrying over numerical information
Balance sheet ratios, turnover figures and staff numbers are carried over as written in the document. The currency is not converted; the source currency is kept and any conversion the contracting authority requires is handled as a separate operation. The fact that the thousands separator and the decimal separator are used the other way round in the source country is the most common source of numerical error.
Integrity of the file
Qualification documents are evaluated together, not one by one. Even the same company's name appearing with its full trade name in one document and as an abbreviation in another can raise questions. The company's trade name, address and registry number are written in the same form throughout the file.
Quality and capacity documents
Quality management system certificates, product certificates and capacity reports come under this heading. The accreditation of the body that issued the certificate is written on the certificate, and this information is kept in translation. For the person assessing the validity of the certificate, the name and number of the accreditation body matter as much as the certificate itself.
Staff and machinery lists
Technical staff undertakings and lists of machinery and equipment are submitted in table form. The equivalents of professional titles vary from country to country; the names of engineering disciplines may not match exactly. In that case the source title is kept and its equivalent is given in brackets, because the title itself forms part of the qualification criterion.
Completing missing documents
Where the shortcoming is in the nature of missing information, the contracting authority may ask for it to be completed; but the fact that the document itself was never submitted is not treated in this way. A missing translation and a missing document are different things. Keeping a list that shows which document's translation is at which stage before the file is handed in makes this distinction visible.