What does probity mean in procurement?
The controls that keep evaluation on the published process: permitted contact, conflicts, conforming lodgement, equal treatment, and an audit trail. They exist so a later review can reconstruct the decision. The exact controls come from the request documents and the procurement regime, not from a single universal checklist.
If your only path to a win is a fact the evaluators are forbidden to use, the call is already no. Warmth is not a row. That is the whole of it, from the supplier’s side of the table.
What is a no-contact period?
The window, once the process is live, in which you may not contact the buyer except through the published channel. A helpful email to someone you already know is a probity event. So is a coffee that “was already in the diary.” So is a clarification asked in a side thread.
Ask through the channel. The answer is published as an addendum so every supplier sees it. That is the point. See addenda and clarifications for what to ask. This page is why you ask it there.
What actually gets a bid disqualified?
Late lodgement, unmet conditions for participation, failures against stated minimum content or format, unmanaged conflicts, and prohibited contact can exclude a bid. The consequence depends on the pack and the applicable rules. For Commonwealth procurements, the current rules permit an equitable opportunity to correct some unintentional errors of form, while limiting further consideration to submissions that meet the stated minimum content and format requirements. See Commonwealth Procurement Rules 10.32–10.34.
A filename rule has excluded better firms than yours. If you cannot lodge conforming in the days remaining, capacity has failed. Do not hope the portal will be kind.
What about conflicts?
Declare them before you price. A former employee on the evaluation committee, a subcontractor who is also advising the buyer, a board member with a related interest: these are not footnotes for legal after the draft exists. They are capacity and risk, today.
A declared conflict can still be a no-bid if it cannot be managed. An undeclared one is a fail you handed to the process. Neither is a reason to start writing while someone “checks.”