The buying process for award with competition can be completed in the following 9 steps:
1. Find an agreement which meets your needs
Before you can award with competition, you must find a commercial agreement that meets your needs.
Make sure that the agreement you choose:
- follows the Procurement Act 2023 regulations
- has more than 1 supplier
2. Define your requirements
This is where you determine exactly what your needs are and what you want from the contract. For example:
- what do you want to buy in this contract
- how long do you want the contract to last
- are you buying the product or service once or will it be a longer term arrangement
3. Decide the type of competition you want to use
There are 2 types of award with competition:
Open procedure: This is where you allow all interested suppliers on the agreement to submit a tender. When using open procedure you must make sure all relevant information is made available to suppliers such as:
- contract value
- timescales
- assessment criteria
Multi stage process: Some agreements allow you to structure award with competition in multiple stages to suit the needs of your procurement. Some agreements allow you to build your process by selecting modular stages to assess suppliers, including:
- a conditions of participation assessment stage
- tendering stage
- presentation or demonstration stage
- site visit stage
- a dialogue stage
You should assess suppliers against the conditions of participation and/or any other relevant criteria set out in the tender notice.
4. Ensure suppliers are not excluded or excludable
When you have received all the bids from interested suppliers you should make sure that they are not on the debarment list.
The debarment list is a published list of suppliers who are excluded from public procurements because of past behaviour or circumstances. Any supplier who is on the list will not be able to win the contract.
5. Evaluate supplier responses
This is where you look through all the supplier responses and evaluate them to determine which supplier best meets your needs.
You will use the award criteria you set out to evaluate and assess their answers.
6. Notify successful and unsuccessful suppliers
Use the score you gave at assessment stage to identify the winning supplier. Before you can award the contract to them you must notify all suppliers of the result.
You should dispatch all award letters and letters to unsuccessful suppliers at the same time.
You could also consider providing an assessment summary. This should provide a supplier with information that will help them to understand why their tender was either successful or unsuccessful
7. Publish contract award notice
The contract award notice announces the outcome of a public procurement.
You must publish a contract award notice to say you intend to award a contract to a specific supplier or suppliers before the optional standstill period.
8. Include a standstill period (optional)
The standstill period should be at least 8 calendar days. During this time the contract award process is suspended. This gives unsuccessful suppliers an opportunity to consider feedback, request further information or call for a review of the decision.
Once the standstill period has passed you can begin your contract with the winning supplier.
Speak to your commercial team or legal advisors if you need advice to decide if this is appropriate for your procurement or not.
9. Publish contract details notice and contract
You must publish a contract details notice setting out that you have entered into a public contract within 30 days of having entered it.
When a contract is above £5 million, you are also required to publish a copy of the contract, including 3 Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
