Bidder Communications

When an ITT is issued near to the closing date, the bidders should be made aware it is closing soon.

Changes to a tender closing date should be made if:

• Significant changes are made to the tender documents and/or;

• Information requested by a bidder in a timely fashion has not been supplied.

Extension to a tender time limit should be proportionate to the complexity of the change and /or the additional information being provided.

You must receive the necessary approval to proceed with a tender extension. This approval must be in accordance with your internal governance procedures.

If the date is amended, the new date should be notified to all tenderers. If any tenderer has already submitted a bid they should be given the opportunity of withdrawing their original bid. They can then submit a revised bid in line with the extended deadline.

Communications with all parties during the procurement activity should be coordinated by you.

You must ensure all communications between bidders and your Organisation are fair and transparent. For example, for any bidder question submitted your answer must anonymise the question and circulate your response to all of the bidders involved in the process.

You should provide details in the ITT documentation of :

• The deadline for bidders to submit questions;

• When you will respond (target timescales).

The use of an electronic tendering system, for example PCS-Tender, will facilitate the receipt and circulation of questions and answers. Public Contracts Scotland offers similar functionality via the bulletin board.

If you do not use an electronic system, clear instructions and contact details should be provided to the bidders within the ITT documentation.

It is best practice to have all documentation created on PCS-Tender before preparing the Contract Notice and advertising the requirement.

If you decide to use the online SPD Module on Public Contracts Scotland (PCS) (the Module), the selection and exclusion criteria will need to be detailed in the SPD i.e. not in the Contract Notice. 

The default exclusion criteria required for a process valued equal to or above the threshold is provided automatically in the Module.  You should deselect any that are not legally required or relevant and proportionate to your procurement exercise. 

You are required to choose the selection criteria relevant to your procurement exercise from the provided list in the Module.  You should not disclose information provided by tenderers which has been designated as confidential.  This could include, but is not limited to, technical or trade secrets and the confidential aspects of tenders.

You may wish to consider adding a requirement to ensure your Organisation’s confidential information is protected throughout the procurement process.

Consideration must also be given to Planning, Sustainable Procurement and Risk Management throughout this stage of the Journey.

Organisations should ensure that:

• all relevant procurement documents make reference to the Data Protection Legislation;
• their terms and conditions are up-to-date, and accurately reflect current Data Protection Legislation and the Organisations own policies.

You should seek legal advice to ensure the above fits the nature of the requirement and the other documentation used.

More detailed information on data protection can be found in Additional Resources. 

Sustainable Procurement

The Sustainable Procurement Duty, outlined in the Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014, requires you to think about how you can:

• improve the social, environmental and economic wellbeing in the areas in which you operate, whether nationally or more locally. Particular focus should be on reducing inequality
• facilitate the involvement of small and medium enterprises, third sector bodies and supported businesses in the procurement process
• promote innovation

You can create a positive environmental impact through every procurement exercise you undertake, regardless of its value or scope. This should be a key part of commodity/service profiling and strategy development rather than an optional area of interest. You must fully explore the possibilities with your User Intelligence Group and other stakeholders for your procurement.

Full Sustainable Procurement guidance can be found the Sustainable Procurement Station in Route 3.

PLEASE NOTE:  if you do not use PCS for producing a contract register, you must still produce a publicly available one.

When a Commodity/Service Strategy is prepared it should be proportionate to:

• risk,
• value and
• the strategic importance of the commodity/service to your organisation.

If using PCS-Tender, the Procurement Officer should upload the appropriate slides to the appropriate task within PCS-Tender.

Organisations should determine if data processing activities are relevant to the procurement exercise.

Your contracts may be subject to Data Protection legislation.

Organisations must ensure:

• current and future procurement exercises are compliant with Data Protection.  This includes contracts that began before the legislation came into force
• All relevant procurement documents make reference to the current legislation.

More detailed information can be found in the Data Protection station within Additional Resources.

Please note that if you withhold the contract value from a contract award notice this information may still be requested from your organisation via the Freedom Of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA).

The FOISA equivalent test is set much higher than the Contracts Register i.e:

• publication would have to, or be likely to cause substantial prejudice
• the impact to public interest in withholding the information would have to outweigh the public interest in releasing it.

Detailed contracts register user guidance can be found in PCS.

For Care and Support Services procurements, Procurement Officers must use Route 3 Develop Strategy stations and sub-stations to develop their service strategy and plan their approach to the procurement.  You should then progress Route 2 from the Develop Documents station.

Cyber Risks

If the contract will involve, support or rely on the digital processing of information, organisations should ensure that appropriate consideration is given to potential cyber risks and their management.

Further information on how to assess and manage cyber risks as part of the procurement process can be found in the Scottish public sector Guidance Note on Supplier Cyber Security  Buyers should assess cyber risks and develop appropriate cyber security requirements as part of award criteria. 

Contract Notice 

Contract Notices must be used to advertise all Route 2 procurement exercises. The only exceptions to this are:

• Use of the negotiated procedure without prior publication (only available in strictly defined and exceptional circumstances) 
• For Care and Support Services contracts between £50,000 and the light touch regime threshold.

Regulation 54(1) of the Public Contracts (Scotland) Regulations 2015 provides that:

 “a contracting authority must offer on the internet unrestricted and full direct access free of charge to the procurement documents from the date of publication of a notice”

The Regulations define ‘procurement documents’ very widely.  This means the literal interpretation of the above is that all documents related to the procurement must be available at the commencement of a procurement.  These documents include:

• technical specifications, terms and conditions and
• tender documents to be used at subsequent stages.

From an operational perspective, however,  it is not always practical to have all documents available at the start of the procurement. In general, only in an Open Procedure is an organisation required to make the ITT available from the outset.  For all other procedures, you must provide sufficiently precise information to enable bidders to identify the nature and scope of the requirement.  From this information the bidder can decide whether to request to participate.

Contract Notices must be published on Public Contracts Scotland (PCS). 

PCS is the national advertising portal.  It provides free access for suppliers to contract opportunities and guides Procurement Officers through the process of creating a Contract Notice.  

Contract Notices published via PCS will contain all of the mandatory information required. 

It is important that the Contract Notice provides the scope of the requirement.  This can be either by volume or by value. 

Framework Agreement Contract Notices must clearly identify the bodies which will be entitled to use it.

If the proposed contract is to be a reserved contract, the Contract Notice must state this.

 The Contract Notice must also state if:

• the organisation intends to hold an electronic auction 

• presentation of tenders in the form of electronic catalogues is accepted or required

• whether or not variants will be allowed or required

• information in respect of any lots.

 Your Contract Notice must state how the bidders will be able to access the Procurement Documentation e.g. if PCS Tender is used, it must provide the relevant reference numbers for the specific procurement. 

If uploading Procurement Documents to PCS size restrictions currently apply:

• 10Mb per document and a maximum of 40Mb for the Procurement Officer, and

 10Mb per document with a maximum of 30Mb for the supplier for the Single Procurement Document (Scotland) (the SPD (Scotland)) or SPD (Scotland) Standardised Statements

The Contract Notice should contain the minimum and specific requirements for your procurement exercise.  You should include statements relating to the relevant SPD (Scotland).

You should include appropriate statements in the Contract Notice that are aligned to the relevant exclusion and selection questions being used in the SPD (Scotland) for your procurement. 

Standardised statements relating to the SPD (Scotland) questions have been developed.  These support you in adopting a standard approach to defining minimum requirements in your Contract Notice.  They are available in the SPD (Scotland) station. 

Unlike SPD (Scotland) questions, you can create new or amend the existing standardised statement(s).  These will then be included in the Contract Notice. Any amended or additional statements must reflect the selection criteria and minimum standards of the procurement exercise.

Publication of Contract Notices

PCS automatically creates a Contract Notice on the Find a Tender Service (FTS) if your procurement is above threshold. 

If using PCS-T or the SPD word document you must set out the specific requirements and minimum standards required. This must be done in the Contract Notice. These must be relevant and proportionate to the procurement. in This is not necessary if using the online SPD Module on PCS: the relevant information is contained within the module already.

It is not necessary to insert the Standardised Statements into the Contract Notice if using the online SPD Module on PCS as the relevant information is contained within the module.  However the Standardised Statements can be used as a guide to help you.

More information on SPD and standardised statements, can be found in Route 3 of the Procurement Journey.

Contract Award 

You must obtain  internal approvals your organisation's governance requires.

The contract documentation should be collated and finalised to reflect the successful tenderer’s submission and agreed terms and conditions.

Where required, the documentation must be signed in duplicate by the appropriate authority levels in both the contracting and tenderer's organisations.

You must consider who you need to inform when a contract has been awarded and the information they require.  

For example:

Notify stakeholders and users of the contract award, providing them with: timescales; details of the contract; and any migration considerations.

If using PCS-Tender, the Contract Award must be activated on this system. This activation does not generate correspondence to the tenderers. As a result you must issue the Contract Award Notice on Public Contracts Scotland.

If the contract involves cyber risks, and you are using the beta Cyber Security Procurement Support Tool (CSPST), please ensure you select the successful tenderer in the CSPST tool to allow your organisation to manage overall cyber risks.

.

Using a PIN as advance notice

You may give advance notice of planned procurements through the publication of a PIN. This can allow potential bidders to prepare themselves to bid in time for the planned contract(s) announced.

• PINs should contain details of the supply and services contracts for which your organisation expects to seek tenders during the next 12 months.
• The standard PIN form should be used. 
• The period covered by a PIN should be a maximum of 12 months from the date on which the notice is transmitted for publication.

Using PCS-T

If you use PCS Tender you must provide:

• the relevant reference numbers for the specific procurement and
• set  time limits for the receipt of tenders (bearing in mind statutory minimums).

Using PCS

If uploading Procurement Documents to PCS file size restrictions  apply.  These are:

• 10Mb per document a maximum of 40Mb for the Procurement Officer; and
• 10Mb per document with a maximum of 30Mb for the Supplier

If you are using PCS-Tender, attachments cannot be added to the Contract Notice on PCS Advertising. You must add your documents to PCS-Tender.

Contracts Register

The Public Contract Scotland (PCS) Contracts Register module provides the facility for buying organisations to operate a private register of all contracts they have in place and a public register of these contracts to meet the obligations of Section 35 of the Procurement Reform Act (Scotland) 2014.

When you publish a PCS award notice an entry is automatically made in your contracts register. Your organisation will need to make the decision whether to make the contracts register publicly viewable or not.

PLEASE NOTE:  if you do not use PCS for producing a contract register, you still must produce a publicly available one.

The PCS contracts register will pull through the contract value from your contract award notice. You should always be as open and transparent as possible when completing this field. This field can be manually amended but all relevant amendments have to be manually duplicated in the Scottish Procurement Information Hub (there is no integration between the two systems for manual amendments).

Even if you withhold the contract value from a contract award notice, this does not exempt the information being subsequently disclosed under the Freedom Of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA). To withhold under FOISA, the information would have to, or be likely to cause substantial prejudice.  Also the public interest in withholding the information would have to outweigh the public interest in its release.

Detailed contracts register user guidance can be found in PCS.

Care and Support Services 

For Route 2 Care and Support Services procurements, you may decide if you wish to advertise the requirement or not. In the case of:

• direct award without advertising the requirement: you only need to publish a Contract Award Notice on PCS, but not a Social and other Specific Services Contract Notice advertising the requirement;

• advertising the requirement: you need to publish a Social and other Specific Services Contract Notice advertising the requirement and also a Contract Award Notice on PCS.

Electronic auctions cannot be used.