Prepare a Brief

A brief is the written document that includes your requirements for your procurement exercise.

Quickfire Guide

Your Brief

As a minimum your Brief should include:

Key Requirements	What do you want? Detail the timescales Technical specifications Statement of work Budget.
Outputs	Examples may be: Temporary staff Site landscaping
How bids will be evaluated	Include your evaluation criteria and weightings. These should be communicated to all potential bidders.
Contract Management	How you are going to manage the contract when it goes live (does anything need to be added to the brief to reflect this?) How will quality or service levels be measured, recorded and maintained? What information should the bidder provide? Costs: how do you keep them from rising? How will issues be rectified? Where and how are deliveries made? How will processes be improved? Etc.

The Prepare a Brief document provides a template that you can populate to issue to tenderers alongside the Invitation to Quote (ITQ) letter. It includes guidance on how to do this that can be deleted when the ITQ is ready for issue.

To prepare a brief, you should gather information to help you make decisions on what your requirements are. This will include research on:

Suppliers	Do you have a current incumbent supplier? What is working in this contract/what is not? Are there suppliers available to quote for the work e.g. locally, regionally, nationally?
Knowledgeable People/Experts	Talk to people in the organisation who deal with the current contract – what do they want with a new contract? Talk with other buyers who have worked on a similar project. Talk with suppliers as part of early market enagagement.
Market information	Have there been any changes in the market? Are there any new innovations/technology?

Any decisions on what your brief will include should include the risk and value involved.

Data Protection Regulations (DPR)

Organisations should ensure that all relevant procurement documents make reference to the Data Protection Regulations (DPR) and update their terms and conditions.

If you are in any doubt you should seek legal advice/speak to your procurement department or your Centre of Expertise (CoE) to help finalise your brief and ensure your ITQ and any other documentation that you issue is DPR compliant

More information on DPR.

Checklist