Yes. It was set to minus 10%.
There is a problem in the sense that the clause meant to address this issue was geared towards the previous amount. Therefore, if someone made a competitive price offering, there was no opportunity for them to validate their price point and suggest that they could in fact deliver the services at that price point. In essence, it de-emphasized or de-incentivized people from bidding low. There was a higher incentive for them to bid high because it was less risky. If you sat outside of those bands, you would receive a zero financial score.
You alluded to the reason this methodology was implemented. One was to prevent lowball offers. What that circumstance would present is someone bidding at a price so low that when the task authorization is requested, no resources are provided by that supplier because they're not able to do so at that price point. That would cause time-wasting and frustration on the part of the department or agency.
I would suggest that the median bands issue was meant to address this lowball issue. It was a valid attempt, I think. In execution, it certainly didn't play out as anticipated. As a result, it has had some unintended consequences, which we noted to be that in four instances, competitive-priced bids were given zero point allocations, with no opportunity to rectify or explain the price, and were therefore not considered, even though on the technical side they were very strong.