The Contract Award Notice is a public announcement of the public procurement exercise outcome.

The publication of a Contract Award Notice is mandatory for ALL regulated procurement exercises i.e. those where the estimated value is £50k or over (excluding VAT).

The Contract Award Notice must be despatched no later than 30 calendar days after the contract or framework agreement award date.  This also applies when a mini competition has been held for a Framework Agreement and the value is £50k or more for goods and services.

Contract Award Notice(s) must be published on the Public Contracts Scotland (PCS) portal. Contract Award Notices published via PCS will contain all of the mandatory information required.

For Dynamic Purchasing Systems, Contract Award Notices do not need to be published for each and every award.  These can be grouped together and published on a quarterly basis within 30 calendar days of quarter end.

The Contract Award Notice should not include any information which would:

• impede law enforcement or otherwise be contrary to the public interest;
• prejudice the commercial interests of any person; or
• prejudice fair competition between bidders.

When running a procurement exercise, there may be circumstances where you wish to award some lots and not others.

For example:

• Delaying a contract award on a specific lot because of a delay to the standstill period but still awarding the other lots in the procurement exercise.
• There are no compliant bids on a specific lot and an alternative exercise may be required for this lot but the bids on the other lots are compliant and can still be awarded.

To support this, in Public Contracts Scotland (PCS), you have the capability to award selected lots through separate award notices.

The process in PCS is:

1. Select your notice and click on “award”
2. The page will be displayed with all lots (if any). If there are no lots, the award process stays the same
3. You will need to deselect lots you don’t want to award and then click  “award”.

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 must still 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 provide an exemption from 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.

In order to achieve the Most Economically Advantageous Tender (MEAT) you can select from several costing models to support your procurement exercise. This ensures that the evaluation is more than simply a “price for price” comparison.

It is important to differentiate between whole life costing and lifecycle costing.

Whole Life Costing: 

Focuses solely on the cost (£) of a product or service from cradle to grave. It takes into account acquisition, operation, ownership and disposal costs.  It does not take into consideration any environmental or social costs.

Life-cycle Costing: 

Life-cycle costing covers part or all of the following costs over the life cycle of a product or service:

a) costs produced by the Organisation or other users, such as:

 (i) costs relating to acquisition;

(ii) costs of use, such as consumption of energy and other resources;

(iii) maintenance costs;

(iv) end of life costs, such as collection and recycling costs; and

(b) costs attributed to environmental factors linked to the product or service during its life cycle.  The monetary value of these factors must be  able to be determined and verified. This may include the cost of emissions of greenhouse gases and of other pollutant emissions and other climate change mitigation costs.

The use of life-cycle costing can support your organisation in meeting the requirements of the Sustainable Procurement Duty. 

Lifecycle Impact Mapping: 

Focuses on social and environmental impact rather than cost.

Life cycle impacts help the user identify and assess impacts. For example, it may help to focus attention on the disposal phase before the procurement is carried out. This would allow your organisation to build end-of-life management requirements into its performance clauses for successful contractors and its own internal management procedures

Every product and service has a ‘life cycle’ or number of stages it goes through from:

• the extraction and sourcing of raw materials, such as mining
• to the transportation of sub-assemblies and parts, often through a global supply chain
• to the use of products or works
• to the delivery of services
• to the re-use, recycling, remanufacture and
• to the final disposal of materials.

You should consider a 'whole life costing' approach. This takes account of all costs from cradle to grave (acquisition, operation, ownership and disposal).

Higher value or complex procurements may require the use of investment appraisal techniques (such as discounted cash flow calculations) and the use of life-cycle costing is deemed best practice for the majority of goods and services procurement exercises. In all cases the data to be provided by tenderers and the method for price evaluation should be defined within the Invitation to Tender (ITT) documentation.

Where life-cycle costing or whole life costing has been detailed in the specification; the evaluation should take into account all of the identifiable costs attributable to a product or service from:

• its acquisition
• through use,
• maintenance and
• end of life (recycling / disposal). 

These could be direct costs like scheduled maintenance and the energy used through the life of a road sweeping vehicle. This also includes less apparent external environmental costs such as the cost of emissions of greenhouse gases based on the energy use of the road sweeping vehicle.

The use of life cycle costing can support your Organisation in meeting the requirements of the Sustainable Procurement Duty.

You may find the Supplier Cost Drivers Checklist useful when developing a pricing schedule.

Price/financial evaluation criteria should include:

•Whole life cost comparisons

•Quantifiable financial benefits arising from the technical evaluation (e.g. speed, fuel or electricity consumption, coverage, shelf life etc.)

•Fixed or variable pricing

•Cost of components, spare parts, consumables and servicing

•Risk analysis and financial appraisal (for major contracts of strategic importance, especially those of an innovative nature

Tender evaluation can only take place once the deadline for tender submissions has passed. The time taken to evaluate the returned submissions will vary from project to project.  This will depend on the complexity and the number of responses received. You should aim to provide approximate timescales for this stage as part of the Invitation to Tender (ITT) document.

An evaluation panel of at least two people should be established. The panel should consist of individuals with the technical ability to evaluate tenders. This may or may not include the buyer. Ideally the panel membership will be consistent throughout the entire process including presentations and site visits.

The evaluation panel should be able to withstand any scrutiny. It is the responsibility of the Organisation to ensure that no member has a conflict of interest which would prevent them from making a fair and objective tender assessment or which might give rise to accusations that they were unable to do so.

The panel members should read and score the quality/technical aspects of the tenders independently. They must use the pre-defined evaluation criteria and scoring system, prior to a moderation meeting taking place.

At the moderation meeting the evaluators come together to agree the final scores. The process to agree the final scores must be fully transparent and documented. You should evaluate the commercial aspects of the tenders separately, including the Price Evaluation. 

As a matter of good practice, no member of the evaluation panel should assess both the quality/technical elements and the commercial elements of the tender.

The evaluation criteria and scoring methodology should have been determined as part of the Develop Documents stage and published to tenderers in the Invitation to Tender (ITT).

The role of the Procurement Officer in the evaluation panel is to ensure an impartial and objective approach is taken to the evaluation of tenders. Some suggested ”Dos and Don’ts” are listed below:

The tender evaluation stage may be accompanied by Presentations/Site Visits.

Presentations and site visits can be included as part of the evaluation process. These offer the opportunity for the evaluation panel to gain a clearer and deeper understanding of the tenderers proposal.

The purpose and anticipated outcomes of the presentations and site visits must be made clear in the ITT documentation. This should include details of how the visits will count towards the overall evaluation of the tender submissions. Particular care must be taken to maintain transparency and equal treatment.

Details of any scoring for either the presentation or site visit must be pre-agreed and published within the relevant procurement documents.

You should ensure that the focus of these events is around the specification and delivery of the product or service, and not on the characteristics of the tenderer.

You should ensure the evaluation panel provides justification of their scoring. This will help when informing unsuccessful tenderers. A full justification of scoring is important and a record should be kept to ensure fairness and transparency of the process.

Comments made should not simply be a restatement of the scoring methodology. For example, if a response is assessed as “Good” it will not be sufficient to state that it is “relevant and good”. Comments must identify the features of the submission itself which justify the particular score. It may also be helpful to record what could have been added to the tender response to secure a higher score.

If PCS-Tender is being used, the justification for scores should be recorded on the system.

For the procurement of Care and Support Services, an Organisation should consider whether it is appropriate for people who use the services and their carers to be involved in decision making.  For example, participation in site visits and interviews with service providers or representation on the evaluation panel. The participation of these people must be consistent throughout the process. For example if they are involved in interviews with service providers, they must participate in all of the interviews arranged with service providers. Care must be taken, when involving people who use services and also their carers in the evaluation of tenders, to ensure that they:

• understand the evaluation process and are clear about their role in it;
• understand the criteria against which tenderers are to be evaluated;
• understand their obligation to be objective and impartial and to treat tenderers equally;
• understand issues relating to the commercial confidentiality of service providers;
• are able to commit the necessary time; and
• receive appropriate training and support.

The involvement of people who use services and their carers, if appropriate, in decision making should be considered on a case-by-case basis. It may, for example, be appropriate to involve them in the evaluation of tenders for the delivery of a discrete service for a small number of individuals.

It is best practice to obtain at least three tender responses, where possible. Where tenderers issued with a copy of the ITT do not submit a response, you should ask for reasons why.  You should record these reasons on file to aid future strategy development.

If only two tenders are received you should consider whether to:

• continue with the competition or  
• review the specification and re-start the process with a view to securing higher levels of engagement.

In making such a decision you should consider:

• the size of the market,
• whether the bids received provide sufficient competition  and
• whether there is a risk that one or more of the tenderers would not participate in a new competition.

If only one tender response is received you should consider why this is.  For example has the market been restricted in some way or has the opportunity been unattractive?. In such cases you should consider restarting the process.

If you are satisfied that there are no particular reasons for receiving only one bid, and that bid is compliant, then you may consider continuing.

The above should be conducted in accordance with your internal governance procedures.

Non Competitive Action

You may consider the use of a Non Competitive Action (NCA) in cases of exceptional circumstances. You must receive approval from the appropriate person in your Organisation e.g. your Head of Procurement, before proceeding.

Tenderers must ensure their bid is submitted  under the rules of the competition and before the specified deadline.

In exceptional circumstances a bid that arrived after the deadline maybe accepted into the competition. The policy for addressing late tenders is subject to the internal governance for your organisation, legislation and case law.

If you are in doubt about whether to allow a late bid into the competition professional procurement and/or legal advice should be sought. There must be a clear audit trail of the handling of late bids and any decision taken.

If PCS-Tender is being used, you will be able to identify the tenderers who have submitted late tenders. You can then determine whether to open the late tender or reject it.

It is best practice for you to notify the tenderers if the late tender has been accepted or rejected.

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 buyers 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, which could include the value, the volume of goods or the nature and extent of services. 

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;

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

• whether or not variants will be allowed or required; and

• 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 (Advertising) 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 SPD Statements.

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

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

Standardised statements relating to the SPD questions have been developed.  These support you in adopting a standard approach to defining minimum requirements in your Contract Notice.  

Unlike SPD 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.

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 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.

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

PCS is the national advertising portal which provides suppliers with free access to contract opportunities. It also guides Buyers through the process of creating a Contract Notice on its website.

PCS automatically creates a Contract Notice on the UK Find a Tender Service (FTS).

Your contract notice must set out the specific requirements and minimum standards that are required in the SPD for your process.  These must be relevant and proportionate to the procurement.

If you are using the SPD capability in PCS-T or the SPD Word document you must set out the specific requirements and minimum standards required. This is not necessary if you are using the online SPD Module on PCS asthe relevant information is contained within the module already and done automatically. 

A selection of Standardised Statements has been developed (and is continually updated) to support Buyers in developing their SPD and these can be used as a guide to help you.

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.

From 26 October 2023, OJEU are making changes to the TED portal (https://enotices.ted.europa.eu/contentView?page=index) which means that notifications from PCS will no longer be compatible. Therefore, from that date, notifications relating to transitional and EU funded procurements will no longer be sent to TED from PCS. Organisations still wishing to notify TED of their procurement activity are able to do so themselves. 

PCS will be updated to reflect these changes after 26 October 2023.

Arrangements Prior to 26 October 2023

Since 1 January 2021, (the end of the transition period after EU Exit) higher value notices have been published on the UK e-notification service Find a Tender Service (FTS) as well as appearing on PCS. This replaced the requirement for them to be published on the Official Journal of the European Union (via their TED) system, with two exceptions. Transitional procurements (public sector contract opportunities that were launched but not concluded before 11pm on 31 December 2020) and all notices relating to EU funded procurement exercises, have continued to be published on TED, as well as FTS and PCS. This has been managed automatically by PCS.  This arrangement will cease on 26 October 2023.

If you are in doubt whether your procurement exercise is or is not EU funded, please seek legal advice. 

Please note that the information and guidance provided in the Procurement Journey routes are not designed to cover the specifics that are often applicable to such procurement exercises and we would always advise you to seek specific legal guidance where you need further support.

When using a two stage process, documents will only be made available to bidders who have passed the selection stage.  Invitations to submit a tender should be issued simultaneously to all bidders and in writing. 

If you are not using a separate selection stage, ITTs should be issued on request to any interested supplier.  This can be at any point prior to the tender submission date set.

Where ITT documents cannot be issued electronically (for example because the information is sensitive or the contract is of a nature that requires specialised tools and/or files) then you can use other means to issue the documents. If you do this, it would be good practice to increase the tender time limit by five working days to allow for this extra process.

The evaluation criteria and weightings must be published within the Contract Notice. For more information refer to Selection, Award & Exclusion.

Price/financial evaluation criteria should include:

• Whole Life Cost comparisons
• Quantifiable financial benefits arising from the technical evaluation (e.g. speed, fuel or electricity consumption, coverage, shelf life, etc.)
• Fixed or variable pricing
• Cost of components, spare parts, consumables and servicing
• Life-cycle costing where appropriate. 
• Risk analysis and financial appraisal (for major contracts of strategic importance, especially those of an innovative nature).

To support this process, as you are developing the documentation you will draw information from the Develop Strategy stage of the Procurement Journey. 

It is best practice to agree the evaluation criteria with the User Intelligence Group (UIG). These criteria will identify which eligible tenderer(s) will deliver best value for money for the organisation, based on the Most Economically Advantageous Tender (MEAT).

Life-cycle Impact Mapping

You should identify the Most Economically Advantageous Tender, assessed on the criteria linked to the contract's subject matter.  This should include price or cost evaluation using a cost effectiveness approach.  A cost effectiveness approach may include Life-cycle Impact Costing.

It is important to differentiate between Whole Life Costing, Lifecycle Costing and Lifecycle Impact Mapping:

Whole Life Costing:  Focuses solely on the cost (£) of a product or service from cradle to grave. It takes into account acquisition, operation, ownership and disposal costs.  It does not take into consideration any environmental or social costs.

Lifecycle Costing:  This covers part or all of the following costs over the life cycle of a product or service:

a) costs produced by the Organisation or other users, such as:

 (i) acquisition costs

(ii) usage costs such as energy consumption and other resources;

(iii)maintenance costs;

iv)end of life costs, such as collection and recycling costs

(b) external environmental  costs linked to the product or service during its life cycle.  This is only included if the  monetary value of these costs can be calculated and verified. This may include the cost of emissions of greenhouse or other pollutants and/or other climate change mitigation costs.

Lifecycle Impact Mapping:  Focuses on social and environmental impact rather than cost.

Life-cycle impact mapping helps you identify and assess impacts. For example, you may focus attention on the disposal phase before beginning the procurement.  This then allows you  to build end-of-life management requirements into performance clauses and internal management procedures.

Please note:  Life-cycle impact mapping can be used alongside life-cycle costing as part of the procurement process.

You may wish to consider the areas below for inclusion within the ITT documentation:

• e-Commerce: eCapability, eProcurement Information, Auctions, etc.
• Contract implementation/contract and supplier management information
• Proposed implementation plan
• Management information - requirement to provide line item detail
• Roles & Responsibilities
• Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
• Mini-competition guidance: details of process to be followed for call offs

The ITT or the Invitation to Confirm Interest should include comprehensive information for potential bidders about the requirement being tendered. While there are a number of Generic Documents listed below that will require insertion into all packs (e.g. a reference to the relevant Contract Notice or Award Criteria weightings) some of the content will naturally be specific to each requirement and you should select those that you need to include in the ITT pack from the list below:

• A reference to the relevant Contract Notice, previously published
• Instructions to bidders including the tender submission deadline;  address to which the tender submission is to be sent and the language which the tender submission must be submitted in
• It is good practice to issue an SPD to bidders.  For more information, please refer to Selection Criteria and SPD
• Award Criteria weightings
• For services contracts, if deemed applicable, you should ask the bidders to indicate any share of the contract that the tenderer may subcontract and information about the subcontractors including their name and contact details.  You may request separate SPD responses from subcontractors and consortium members, when deemed appropriate, in order to safeguard the effective delivery of the contract, based on relevance and proportionality to the contract
• For contracts which may be extended, the nature, quantity and, where possible, the estimated time for exercising options
• For supply or service contracts, the nature, quantity and, where possible, estimated publication dates of notices of future tenders
• If applicable to the contract, the delivery of supplies commencement or termination date(s)
• The address of the Organisation who will award the contract
• Economic and technical conditions, financial guarantees and any information required from bidders
• The form of the contract to be used e.g. purchase, lease, hire-purchase, or a combination
• If electronic access to the relevant Procurement Documents cannot be offered the address and deadline date for requesting Procurement Documents and the language(s) to be used
• Background and overview of the tendering and evaluation process including details of presentations and site visits, if applicable
• Terms and Conditions which will apply to any resulting contract with the principle supplier
• Specification and technical requirements
• Sustainable Procurement Duty requirements e.g. economic, social and environmental considerations including community benefits and Fair Work Practices. See Sustainable Procurement Tools
• Cyber Security Requirements (example ITT and Contract Notice wording when using the Cyber Security Procurement Support Tool)
• Quality questionnaire

The activities at this stage must be carried out in a carefully managed manner that support the Principles of Procurement. It is the responsibility of you and your Organisation to make sure these requirements are met.

The distinction between selection and award criteria is important.

Selection criteria are focused on "the bidder" and award criteria are focused on "the bid”. You should maintain a clear distinction between both throughout the procurement process.

This means that selection criteria should be addressed at the selection stage and should not form part of the award stage.  This is the case even if the selection criteria were omitted from the selection stage in error.

However, you can apply different aspects at selection and award if relevant.  For example you can look at the bidder's general staffing in selection and the qualifications and experience of those to be assigned to the contract at award, if that is relevant.

Although the selection and award criteria must  be developed and managed separately, it is possible for you to conduct these stages simultaneously or in any order where the process you are undertaking allows for this. For instance you may wish to conduct the Award Stage prior to checking minimum selection criteria are met.

You can include special contract performance conditions as long as they are linked to the contract's subject matter.

Such conditions may cover economic, innovation-related, environmental, social or employment-related conditions.  If specific performance conditions are to be used they must be included in the Prior Information Notice or the Contract Notice and in the Procurement Documents.

At Award Stage bidders may be requested to supply the names and professional qualifications of the staff involved in the performance of the contract.

A clearly documented process must be followed.  This will ensure there are satisfactory responses from bidders and no procurement process inconsistencies. Any failure in this respect will leave the procurement open to audit scrutiny and legal challenge.

Please note: the content of this page is currently undergoing a review. For further information on the real Living Wage please see the What is the real Living Wage information sheet, the Scottish Government's Fair Work and Procurement webpage or alternatively please email scottishprocurement@gov.scot

Please note that information on Fair Work First, which includes payment of the real Living Wage, can be found in SPPN 06/2021. 

You must consider the relevance and proportionality of Fair Work practices for its inclusion in the award criteria. 

Fair Work practices will be particularly relevant to consider where the quality of the services or goods delivered are affected by the quality of the workforce engaged. 

When deciding whether or not Fair Work practices are relevant  you should consider all relevant factors and be able to justify their inclusion.  You should consider whether:

• There is any previous experience of poor quality practices, including pay and conditions, impacting on the quality of service to be delivered. 
• There is any history of low pay or unequal pay in that sector;
• There is a risk that staff working on the contract might be subject to exploitative practices e.g. through the inappropriate use of zero hours contracts, through unnecessary distancing of the employer-worker relationship: by use of any “umbrella company” and through pay and hours arrangements that deny workers stability of employment or hours of work, by failing to pay wages for travel time within the working day,
• There is evidence that working conditions are making recruitment and retention problematic;
• Contractors are seeking to cut their costs through driving down staff terms and conditions, including pay;
• Workers will be required to interact directly with the organisation’s employees and/or members of the public.  Also whether they will spend any time on the organisation’s premises

In any of these circumstances, Fair Work practices are likely to be a relevant consideration. However this is not an exhaustive list and other factors may be relevant, depending on the specifics of an individual contract.

An example of a Fair Work practices Invitation to Tender question can be found in Annex A of the Addressing Fair Work Practices including the Living Wage, in Procurement Statutory Guidance.  Further information to consider can be found in Fair Work Practices Considerations.

At the contract award stage you, should ensure that the contract complies with the conditions, requirements and criteria set out in the Procurement Documents.

In addition, you may decide not to award a contract to the bidder submitting the most economically advantageous tender, if its bid does not comply with the social, environmental and labour law.

Fair and Ethically Traded Goods

Award criteria can also relate to the supply or use of ethically or fairly traded products.

In all cases award criteria must be proportionate and should relate to the work, supply or service being procured, and not to the general capacities or qualities of the bidder. A general corporate social responsibility policy is unlikely to demonstrate suitability to deliver a contract. For further guidance please refer to the Sustainable Procurement Tools. 

Equality Legislation

Equality legislation places duties on all public bodies. In exercising their functions they must have due regard to the need to:

• eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation and other prohibited conduct 
• advance equality of opportunity - between people who share a relevant protected characteristic and those who do not-
• foster good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not

You should ask bidders to self-certify that they comply with all relevant equality legislation.

Where evidence is provided of equality legislation breaches, you must consider any remedial action the bidder has taken to address these.

For organisations working outside the UK, equality questions relate to the equivalent legislation in the country where the bidder is located / breach occurred.

Effective contract management and monitoring should be undertaken to ensure that the equality assessment continues to be applied throughout the contract duration.

Where you have determined that minimum standards are applicable (either within selection or award criteria) they must relate to and be proportionate to the subject matter of the requirement.  This must be clearly detailed in the appropriate documentation.

When you wish to apply minimum standards to limit the number of potential suppliers to be invited to tender, minimum standards or objective criteria must be specified or referred to in the Contract Notice. This must be detailed in the procurement documentation to allow the rejection of potential suppliers.

Similarly if a pass mark can only be obtained by a response that meets the minimum requirement, this must be clearly stated within the scoring guidance provided to suppliers. 

You may consider variants as long as:

• it has been specified in the Contract Notice and the Procurement Documents. 
• All variants meet the specified minimum requirements
• You specify how variants  will be evaluated. All variant bids should be evaluated using the same criteria as the standard bids and compared on a like-for-like basis.

Variants cannot be considered unless the above are met. You should consider whether to allow bidders to propose different TUPE scenarios within their bids. If so, it should provide clear directions to tenderers to ensure that bids can be compared on a like-for-like basis.

• select the suppliers to be invited to bid for the contract or
• to identify the supplier to whom the contract will be awarded.  

• the selection or award criteria (depending upon the stage of the competition)
• sub-criteria, weightings
• minimum standards
• pass marks (if any) etc.

If there is any doubt as to the level of detail that must be disclosed/published, you should seek specialist professional procurement or legal advice and guidance.

Additional Care and Support Services guidance on award criteria can be found in Care and Support Services.

For Care and Support Services, it is best practice for an organisation to also take account of some other issues when procuring these services including:

• the quality of the service;

• the continuity of the service;

• the affordability of the service;

• the availability and comprehensiveness of the service;

• the accessibility of the service;

• the needs of different types of service users;

• the involvement of service users; and

• innovation.

This is not an exhaustive list and there may be other considerations that an organisation may also take account of and which are relevant on a case-by-case basis.

A single stage procedure asks bidders to submit all relevant information at the same time.  This will usually take the form of a completed SPD document, alongside the bidders response to the rest of the procurement documents e.g. Invitation to Tender (ITT).

In this instance the bidders’ SPD responses should be assessed on a pass/fail basis, and none of the questions should be scored and weighted, as there is no requirement to shortlist.

In a two-stage procedure, bidders will provide the information in two distinct stages.  Firstly the bidder will submit the SPD for evaluation by the buyer.  All of the exclusion questions and most of the selection questions will be assessed on a pass/fail basis. 

The technical and professional ability section of the SPD also includes the ability to score and weight questions.  This allows the buyer to rank responses and shortlist a number of bidders to invite to tender.

The scoring and weighting methodology must be fair, transparent and clearly explained to all bidders upfront.

Buyers should detail the scoring and weighting process that will be used in the Contract Notice or within the SPD module on Public Contracts Scotland.

Bidders must be given the opportunity to provide evidence that they have taken sufficient and appropriate remedial action i.e. they have ‘self-cleansed’. If you are satisfied that the evidence provided is sufficient to demonstrate reliability, you must not exclude the bidder from the procurement procedure on those grounds

The bidder must satisfy that it has:

• paid, or undertaken to pay, compensation for any damage caused by the criminal offence or misconduct;
• provided detailed facts and circumstances by collaborating with the investigating authorities; and
• taken appropriate concrete technical, organisational and personnel measures to prevent further criminal offences or misconduct.

When considering any self-cleansing measures, organisations must consider all relevant factors.  This includes the gravity and particular circumstances of the criminal offence or misconduct.

If you believe the bidder’s remedial action is insufficient to demonstrate reliability, you must provide the bidder with a statement outlining the reasons for the decision. The statement of reasons must be provided in writing as soon as is reasonably practical to allow the bidder to understand why the self-cleansing measures taken are insufficient.

Standardised statements have been developed to support you in explaining your selection criteria to bidders. 

Each standardised statement is aligned to a selection question in the SPD. You should select the statements that are relevant to your procurement exercise.  In some instances, you are able to adapt them.

The full list of statements can found in the standardised statement document, at the bottom of this page and an example is included below:

Some of the standardised statements, for example those relating to Environmental Management Legislation and Quality Management Procedures, are very lengthy. Therefore you should review these carefully and ensure that you only select only those parts of the standardised statements that allow you to specify your minimum requirements. You should be careful to ensure that the criteria included is proportionate..

This process will enable you to adopt a standard approach to defining the selection criteria in Contract Notices.

If using the online SPD module on PCS there is no need to add the statements to the Contract Notice, it should be added directly beside the question in the module.

More information on where to state information in the Contract Notice can be found on the Contract Notice and Advertising station.

Where the bidder is relying on other parties to meet the selection criteria for example as part of a consortium or is using a sub-contractor, you should request a separate SPD response from each party being relied on.

These parties should complete the exclusion criteria section of the SPD and whichever selection questions, the main bidder is relying on them for.

If the bidder is using a sub-contractor but not relying on them to meet the selection criteria, each sub-contractor should complete an SPD response.  In this instance, they will only need to complete the exclusion criteria.

The responses should be evaluated alongside the main bidders SPD response.

Where a party meets the mandatory grounds for exclusion you must require that the main bidder to replaces them.

Where there are discretionary grounds for exclusion you may require the bidder(s) to be replaced.  This should be considered on a case-by-case basis, taking into account the various circumstances of the procurement exercise.

Where a bidder relies upon the capacities of other entities with regard to criteria relating to economic and financial standing you may require the bidder and those entities to be jointly liable for the performance of the contract.

In the case of supply or service contracts your organisation may require certain critical tasks to be performed directly by the bidder itself or, where the tender is submitted by a group of bidders, by a participant in that group.

You can find more information on the SPD for a works contract by emailing: PropertyandConstruction@gov.scot

In the case of Care and Support Services, the mandatory exclusion grounds (regulation 8 of Procurement (Scotland) Regulations 2016) must be applied to all procurements. An organisation can also choose to apply the discretionary exclusion grounds and selection criteria.  It is best practice to use the SPD for this purpose.

You may use Part V of the SPD when using PCS-Tender to reduce the number of already qualified candidates who meet all the exclusion and selection criteria in the SPD.

• Part V of the SPD can only be used for restricted procedures, competitive procedure with negotiation, competitive dialogue procedures and innovation partnerships. It cannot be used in the case of open procedures and negotiated procedure without prior publication. Part V may be used if it is proportionate and relevant to the contract, and it is specified in the Contract Notice.
• If you decide to use Part V of the SPD, you need to specify the objective and non-discriminatory criteria or rules to be applied, the minimum number of bidders and where applicable, the maximum number the organisation intends to invite to tender or conduct dialogue. This information must be accompanied by requirements concerning any (types of) certificates or forms of documentary evidence, , to be produced, as set out in the relevant Contract Notice.

The minimum number of bidders that may be invited to a Restricted Procedure by an Organisation is five. In any event, the number of candidates invited must be sufficient to ensure genuine competition (note: if the number of bidders meeting the selection criteria is fewer than five the procurement can still proceed). In a competitive dialogue, competitive procedure with negotiation and innovation partnership the minimum number of candidates taken forward by the Organisation is three. In any event the number of candidates invited must be sufficient to ensure genuine competition (note: if the number of bidders meeting the selection criteria is fewer than five the procurement can still proceed).

If you are using PCS-Tender financial ratios these should be included in the Contract Notice or procurement documents.

If you are using the online SPD module on PCS, there is a drop-down menu of ratios to choose from. These use standard terminology from the Scottish Government Accountancy Services.  Your organisation may use different terminology than these.  If this is the case, or you want to add other ratios not listed, you can use the other financial requirements question to specify your ratio.