Public procurement in Canada is governed by principles of fairness, transparency, and accountability. Yet, even seasoned professionals can stumble over recurring documentation errors that delay projects, invite legal challenges, or compromise compliance. Here are the five most common mistakes in public procurement documents—and how Legalflo, Edilex’s intelligent legal automation platform, helps you avoid them.

Automation isn’t a silver bullet — but when paired with sound oversight, it becomes a force multiplier: faster operations, stronger controls, clearer audit trails, and better value for money.

Vague or incomplete scope of work

Mistake: Procurement documents often fail to clearly define deliverables, timelines, or performance standards. This leads to confusion, scope creep, and disputes.

Canadian Insight: The Office of the Procurement Ombudsman emphasizes the importance of clarity in requirements to ensure fairness and transparency [1].

How Legalflo Helps: Legalflo’s smart templates prompt users to specify scope details with guided fields and contextual tips, ensuring nothing is overlooked.

Inconsistent timelines and deadlines

Mistake: Conflicting dates across documents—such as submission deadlines, evaluation periods, or contract start dates—can invalidate the process or cause bidder confusion.

Canadian Insight: CanadaBuys recommends maintaining up-to-date records and confirming all significant information in writing to avoid miscommunication [2].

How Legalflo Helps: Legalflo automatically synchronizes key dates across all related documents and flags inconsistencies before publication.

Missing Evaluation Criteria or Weighting

Mistake: Omitting clear evaluation criteria or failing to assign weights to each criterion can lead to biased or legally challenged decisions.

Canadian Insight: The federal Supply Manual mandates transparent evaluation frameworks to uphold procurement integrity [3].

How Legalflo Helps: Legalflo includes built-in modules for defining evaluation grids, scoring rubrics, and weighting systems—ensuring compliance and defensibility.

Non-compliance with trade agreements and legal standards

Mistake: Overlooking obligations under trade agreements like CFTA or CPTPP, or failing to meet provincial procurement laws, can result in disqualification or penalties.

Canadian Insight: Fasken’s Procurement Guide stresses the need to align with common law principles and trade obligations [4].

How Legalflo Helps: The in-house legal team behind the Legalflo software updates documents in line with current laws and standards.

Poor Document Version Control

Mistake: Multiple drafts floating around without clear versioning can lead to outdated or unauthorized documents being used.

Canadian Insight: Best practices from CanadaBuys include maintaining confidential, up-to-date files and involving specialists early [2].

How Legalflo Helps: Legalflo tracks every version, logs changes, and ensures only the latest approved document is used—reducing risk and confusion.

Legalflo: Your Compliance Companion

Legalflo transforms public procurement from a paper chase into a streamlined, legally sound process. With built-in legal intelligence, automated templates, and real-time validation, it empowers procurement professionals to produce error-free documents with confidence.

[1] Government of Canada –  Procurement practice review of Public Services and Procurement Canada (Gouvernment of Canada)
[2] Government of Canada – Procurement advice and best practices (Government of Canada)
[3] Government of Canada – Procurement advice and best practices (Government of Canada)
[4] Fasken – Government Contracts,
Procurement and
Tender Law in Canada (Fasken)