Procure

The time and effort you invested during the ‘Plan’ and ‘Define’ stages of the procurement journey will have helped you draft your procurement documentation. At a minimum, you should prepare:

• The Invitation to Tender (ITT) including instructions to bidders.
• The Specification of Requirements.
• Pricing and quality response templates.
• The draft contract.

Clear specifications are essential for fair and inclusive market engagement. They help bidders decide if they want to participate and enable you to compare their prices with your cost expectations. Without this clarity, you risk not achieving your desired outcomes within your budget or, in the worst case scenario, a failed procurement.

Your procurement pack should have been developed collaboratively with your stakeholders, and with involvement from relevant subject matter experts (e.g. cyber security specialists, human resources, finance and others) depending on the nature of your requirements.

To finalise your procurement pack, ensure it’s been peer reviewed and has been signed off through your organisation’s governance arrangements. With that done, you’re now ready to formally start your procurement process.

If you’re planning to use an existing framework agreement or dynamic purchasing system (DPS), you’ll need to invite all potential suppliers available through these and any relevant lots, to bid for your opportunity.

If you are carrying out any other procedure that is not through a framework agreement or DPS you will need to publish the ITT pack on Sell2Wales. Sell2Wales will automatically publish the opportunity to Contracts Finder and, where appropriate, the Find a Tender Service. The Welsh Procurement Policy Note WPPN 07/21: Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs)-friendly procurement states that all opportunities above £25,000 (inclusive of VAT) should be published on Sell2Wales.

Familiarise yourself with the time limits the tender should be live for. For procurements above threshold these are described in the regulations (currently the Public Contracts Regulations 2015) and differ depending on the procedure and how you are engaging with the market. In any case, the tender timelines should be fair and proportionate, with consideration of making it easier for SMEs to bid.

Whilst the ITT is live, all engagement with suppliers (or bidders) should be recorded using a Clarification Questions log. At this point, contracting authorities should avoid speaking to suppliers/ bidders directly to ensure that information is not passed on that may advantage them or disadvantage other bidders. Remember, equal treatment is an important general principle of law in the public procurement context.

The selection stage is used to assess bidders’ suitability to carry out what you require in your contract, so you’re assuring yourself of their solvency and competency. This includes their economic and financial standing, and their technical and professional ability based on past experience.

If you’re planning to use an existing framework agreement or DPS where a two-stage further competition is allowed, you’ll shortlist bidders to find the ones most suitable for your procurement using a capability assessment. Only bidders on the shortlist will be invited to bid for your opportunity.

Otherwise, the standard selection questionnaire (SQ) should be used to apply grounds for excluding bidders and selecting suitable bidders to then evaluate their tenders.

It is not good practice to encourage bidders to compete on price alone as it can create an unhealthy market for your goods and services. For above threshold procurements, under the  Public Contracts Regulations 2015 (PCR 2015), evaluation of bidders should be on the basis of most economically advantageous tender (MEAT). This means that elements of price (or whole life costs), quality and social value all play an important role in the final score of each bidder. The purpose of identifying MEAT is not to find the cheapest bidder but one who can deliver the best value for money.

Social value questions to bidders can include tackling inequality, helping disadvantaged communities, helping SMEs through use in the supply chains, supporting mental health of staff, amongst others. In Wales, social value should align to the 7 goals, 5 ways of working and 4 lenses of value contained within the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, the Community Benefits Policy and other relevant policies such as Welsh Procurement Policy Note WPPN 12/21: Decarbonisation through procurement – Addressing CO2e in supply chains. You should also have consideration for Welsh Procurement Policy Note WPPN 06/21: Decarbonisation through procurement – Taking account of Carbon Reduction Plans which states that you should ask suppliers to provide a Carbon Reduction plan as part of their bid for contracts over £6,000,000 (including VAT).

Remember that bidders should not only be evaluated on quality (including social value) and price (or whole life costs, including potential exit costs), but also, in some cases, their economic and financial standing.

Your organisation should have an existing outcome letter template that can be adapted for each procurement. For above threshold procurements ensure to provide feedback to unsuccessful suppliers that is relative to the successful supplier, ensuring you detail where one response was weaker than the other. The letter should be as clear and detailed as possible to ensure that the bidder clearly understands where they did not meet the requirements. This is important because:

• Good feedback allows suppliers to improve their tenders in the future (especially helping SMEs and voluntary, community and social enterprises); and
• Accurate feedback can protect your organisation from being legally challenged following a procurement process.

If you have the capacity, it is good practice to offer verbal feedback sessions to the unsuccessful bidders where they can understand your feedback better and ask questions.

Once your evaluation is complete, you have moderated the scores and have sent out the letters notifying bidders of the tender outcome, you should observe a standstill period. Standstill periods of 10 calendar days are required for procurements that are covered by the PCR 2015. For procurements that are out of scope of PCR 2015, for example those that are under threshold, observing a standstill period is good practice as it gives the unsuccessful bidders time to review their feedback and ask any questions before the contract is awarded.

After the standstill period is complete, you can enter into a contract with the winning bidder. Once all parties have signed the contract, you should publish your contract award notice on Sell2Wales in line with Welsh Procurement Policy Note (WPPN) 01/24 ‘Transparency – publication of contract award notices’. This policy states that all Welsh Public Sector bodies, including central government and those which are not central government authorities, must publish all contracts that are at least £30,000 inclusive of VAT on Sell2Wales.