Tendering Relief Housing for Indonesia's Flores Earthquake

On 15 August 2026, a magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck off the coast of Flores in East Nusa Tenggara. By 17 August the confirmed death toll had risen from 40 to 68, with 213 people injured. More than 1,300 homes were damaged and around 5,000 people were displaced, while landslides blocked access roads. The province is one of Indonesia's poorest, with a poverty rate well above the national average.

A poorer province is exactly where the cheapest quotation is most attractive — and where it is most expensive. The saving appears in the purchase order. The failure appears in year two, on a budget that has no room for it.

Write numbers into the tender, not adjectives

Our weight is the bare box, before any fit-out. The low-end figure is a complete unit of the same footprint.

Weight is the proxy. A frame that is genuinely 2.2–3.0 mm with 60 g galvanising cannot come in at 0.8 t. If a quotation claims premium steel and a light module, one of the two numbers is wrong — and it is usually the one in the specification column.

Six things that go wrong in a cheap quotation

1. Overstated thickness — quoted at 2.1 mm, delivered at 1.45–1.8 mm.
2. Non-standard shrunken sections — sold as 50 × 100, actually 48 × 98.
3. Black-iron corner blocks — the first place to rust, and the part you cannot inspect once the building is closed up.
4. Low-grade colour coil — 5–10 g of zinc, visible rust within a season.
5. Recycled powder coating — no film-thickness or adhesion guarantee to claim against.
6. B-grade flooring — salt migration corrodes the frame,