Gates found this week

Pass/fail conditions found by reading solicitation document packs, with the document and section each one sits in.

5-11 September 2026, eleven packs. Han Kim, sole proprietor, Gatineau, Quebec. NEQ 2274778242.

City of Burnaby - NOI 193-09-26, Enterprise Permitting and Licensing Core Software

Board: bids&tenders, tenant burnaby. Posted 9 September 2026, closes 29 September 2026, 15:00 PDT. Carried in the daily bid summary alongside five ordinary solicitations, listed status Open, one document, submit-online enabled.
Gate: it is not a competition. "Notice is hereby given by the City of Burnaby of its intent to renew a contract with Tyler Technologies Inc. (the ‘Vendor’) for software support and maintenance and related services between January 1, 2027 to December 23, 2028." Estimated value $623,458.08 USD including GST and PST.
Gate: the closing date accepts one kind of submission, a Letter of Objection. "The required experience and resources, with proven ability to offer the same or better goods and/or services in the same timeframe, are key criteria with regard to the City's consideration of an objection."
Reasons the City gives for the direct award, quoted in full: "The Vendor has specific knowledge of the proprietary product"; "Manufacturer's warranty may be void if serviced by an unapproved vendor"; "It is the City's opinion that there is currently no other vendor able to support these services"; "The impact of introducing a new software and support provider would affect costs as well as resources."
Tested at: before the pack. "The City will not be responsible for any costs incurred by any Respondent challenging this NOI."

Enterprise Ireland - 2026/028, Digital Platform for Startup Ireland National Accelerator

Board: etenders.gov.ie, resourceId 8927804. Published 9 September 2026, closes 12 October 2026, 12:00. Open procedure, MEAT, single-party framework. Pack requires a supplier account; the notice does not say so.
Gate: RFT s6.1.2 Previous Experience, pass/fail. "Details of three (3) reference contracts ... which demonstrate ... experience in successfully delivering a Digital System for Accelerator programmes ... within the 36 months prior to the deadline ... with a minimum annual contract value in the region of €50,000." Referee contact details are required per contract and Enterprise Ireland may contact them without further reference to the tenderer.
Gate: RFT s6.1.1 Financial Standing, pass/fail. Turnover above €200,000 per annum for each of the last three financial years, verified by certificates from the tenderer's auditors.
Gate: RFT s6.1.1 Insurance, pass/fail. Public liability €6.5m, product liability €6.5m, professional indemnity €1m, cyber liability €5m. Employer's liability €13m, and note #1 exempts sole traders with no employees from that one only.
Tested at: declaration in the Tender Response Document at submission, documentary verification later. A tenderer who cannot meet the thresholds cannot sign the declaration.

Calgary Board of Education - 2026RFP000449, Digital Onboarding Solution

Board: Bonfire, opportunity 108209. Intent to Bid closes 14 September 2026, 14:00 MDT. Open.
Gate: Evaluation Criteria Matrix s2.9(e), "Valid Certificate of Insurance as per requirements in Section 2.26", listed as a pass/fail Commercial Proposal submission document.
s2.26: $5M commercial general liability naming the Board as additional insured, $2M employer liability, technology errors and omissions, $10,000,000 cyber liability per claim.
Tested at: submission.
References: 5 of 100, scored.

The Health Research Board (Ireland) - Bibliometric Tool

Board: etenders.gov.ie, resourceId 8995919. Closes 5 October 2026, 10:00. Pack downloads without an account.
Gate: RFT s4.4 Technical Capacity, pass/fail. "Tenderers must provide information clearly demonstrating successful delivery of three (3) instances of previous comparable experience/projects ... within the last three (3) years ... to other organisations in OECD countries." Note 4 requires referee contact details per project, contracting authority may contact them.
Gate: RFT s4.3, employer's liability EUR 13m, public liability EUR 6.5m.
Tested at: submission, both.

City of Doncaster Council - DSA Phase II Website Design and Implementation

Board: YORtender ref 3058. Closes 5 October 2026, 15:00.
Gate: s1c_eval.txt line 61, "ICT-Q001 Tier1 Supplier Cybersecurity | Pass/Fail". Line 52 routes it to Section 3 Part B2, inside the submission.
Insurance in the same pack, s3.2: "you do not need to provide evidence with your submission". That sentence is absent from the accreditations block and from s3b2_cyber.
Tested at: submission for cyber, preferred tenderer for insurance.

South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust - digital consent

Board: Atamis. Open procedure, above threshold, 36 months plus two 12-month extensions.
Gate: NHS Selection Questionnaire - financial standing, insurance certificates, prior-implementation references.
Gate: DTAC, DCB0129 clinical safety case, DSPT or ISO 27001.
Tested at: submission.
Scope: buys an existing consent product.

Toronto Catholic District School Board - P-001-27, Reporting Tool, Data Science Platform

Board: bids&tenders, tenant tcdsb. Opened 9 September 2026, closes 30 September 2026, 15:00 EDT. Questions close 22 September. Online submissions only.
Gate: Bid Document Access, on the notice itself. "To download secured documents and/or to participate in this opportunity, you will need to have a subscription plan or buy Pay-Per-Bid access for this opportunity." The free preview returns a one-page cover sheet carrying the two dates. The other three documents return "Only PDF files can be previewed, to view this file please register for this bid."
Tested at: before reading. No clause in this pack is checkable from outside it.
Scope, quoted from the notice: "implement a Cloud based data science and analytics solution and provide post-implementation professional services and support", and "It is the TCDSB's intention to select a Proponents' solution".

City of Miramichi (New Brunswick) - RFI 26-036, Human Resources Information System

Board: bids&tenders, tenant miramichi, tenderId 29ee73c2-36fb-498b-a5e9-96182c553458. Opened 25 August 2026, addendum posted 10 September, questions close 17 September, closes 22 September 2026, 11:00 ADT. Owner Pay, no plan fee. Online submissions only. Full 10-page pack downloads to a registered plan taker at zero cost.
No gate. Read the whole pack twice looking for one and there is nothing here that disqualifies anybody: no evaluation matrix, no mandatory-requirements table, no reference count, no insurance certificate, no bond, no certification, no headcount floor, no per-bid charge. The only professional-licensing clause, Instructions to Proponents s6.3, binds services performed under professional seals, which in New Brunswick means engineering, architecture and surveying, not software implementation.
What replaces the gate: RFI s7.1. "The City of Miramichi does not intend to award a contract, this RFI is for information gathering purposes only and does not constitute a solicitation or commitment to award a contract." s1.2 says it again. Nothing is being scored because nothing is being bought. A supplier reading the title as work is reading it wrong, and a supplier skipping it because there is no contract is also reading it wrong: s3.1 of the Submission Information says the City wants integration approaches, implementation considerations and budgetary pricing to inform a future procurement, so the responses shape what the eventual RFP asks for.
The compliance mechanism instead of a gate: Instructions to Proponents s6.1 requires non-compliance to be noted on letterhead. That converts every requirement a small supplier cannot meet, including s11.1 Canadian municipal references and s14.1(c) Product Overview, from a disqualification into a disclosure.
Document trap worth naming: this pack contains two different clauses both numbered 6.1. Instructions to Proponents s6.1 is the non-compliance clause; RFI s6.1 is the list of functional areas (a) to (j). A citation in a response that does not name which document it means is ambiguous to the committee reading it.

County of Haliburton (Ontario) - CTY-RFI-2026-1, Recreation Registration and Booking Software

Board: bids&tenders, tenant haliburtoncounty, tenderId 2a0e01ed-2225-47f5-a30c-1f2e309a1c7a. Issued 10 September 2026, questions close 21 September, addenda 24 September, closes 1 October 2026, 13:00. Online submissions only. The 20-page pack downloads anonymously, no account and no fee. Issued by the County on behalf of three member municipalities: Algonquin Highlands, Dysart et al, Minden Hills.
Gate: the cover page. "This Request for Information is not a formal competitive bidding process. No Contract will result from submitting a response to this Request for Information." s1.1 adds the second half: "Responses to this RFI will not be evaluated or used to pre-qualify vendors." There is no award and no standing to win, so nothing in Part 2 is scored.
Gate on fit, not on compliance: Part 2 runs thirteen sections and every one of them opens "Describe the solution's ability to..." - waitlists and capacity changes after registration opens (2.1.2), membership suspend and renew (2.2), facility rentals (2.3), payments and refunds (2.6), AODA and MFIPPA (2.13). The pack is written for a vendor with the product already running, and Part 3.2 books live demonstrations the week of 26 October. A supplier proposing to build one has nothing to demonstrate.
Tested at: not tested at all, which is the point. The County publishes its own sizing instead - 11,418 client accounts and 46 staff users across a population of 16,169 - so a respondent can price the eventual RFP without asking.
Compare with Miramichi 26-036 above: both are RFIs that award nothing, and both are still worth reading, but Miramichi asks how you would approach the work and Haliburton asks what your product already does. Only one of those is answerable without the product.

Trocaire (Ireland)

Board: etenders.gov.ie. Pack readable without an account.
Gate: clarification period closed 1 September, ahead of the tender deadline. No requirement in the pack can be questioned.

Bedford College (UK)

Solicitation: ungated pre-market engagement.
Gate: MultiQuote (Elcom) self-registration. Gmail domain rejected, then DUNS 243374482 unverifiable for a non-UK supplier. Manual approval requested from support@elcom.com, still pending.
Tested at: registration, before the documents are visible.

Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage (Ireland)

Gate: referee requirement, outside the section a first read covers.
Logged here as ungated twice on 8 September. Corrected on the third read.

The SME-suitable flag, measured

Contracts Finder carries one machine-readable field that claims to tell a small supplier whether a contract is meant for it: suitability.sme. Over the 194 open tender notices published on that board between 12 August and 10 September 2026, it is set true on 175 of them, or 90 per cent. It is set on boiler replacements, on play equipment, on aircrew boots and on an 800-million-pound cyber framework alike.

Of those 175, 71 attach a document on Contracts Finder itself. 71 name a separate e-sourcing registration that has to be completed before any of the pack can be read. 43 carry neither a document nor even the name of the portal holding one. The pass/fail clauses are in the pack, so on 104 of the 175 the flag is the only thing a supplier can read, and it says yes to nearly everyone.

All 194 rows, one per notice, with the flag, the document count, whether a registration comes first, and the notice link: tender/sme-suitable.csv. Pulled from the Contracts Finder OCDS endpoint on 11 September 2026.

Counts

UK Contracts Finder, below threshold, 5-8 September: 28 unique open notices, every title read. One software-shaped, and it was a product purchase.
etenders.gov.ie, active notices under the software CPV codes: 95 read. 6 at EUR 350k or under and open procedure. Four of those six are in this list.
TED, EU-wide, CPV 72000000 and neighbours: 1,062 active.
bids&tenders, tenant tcdsb, 10 September: 4 open notices, 1 software-shaped, and its documents are behind a per-bid charge.
bids&tenders, tenant burnaby, 10 September: 9 open notices, 1 software-shaped, and it is a direct award already decided.
Packs in this register carrying no pass/fail clause at all: 1 of 11, and that one awards nothing. Packs that award nothing at all: 2 of 11.

Same read on a pack of yours: handled.tools/tender
hankimproduction@gmail.com