It shouldn't be like banging your head on one of these
I recently made a tweet about the procurement process which was picked up by @realprojects and @innerquest. As we have all been involved with the pain of procurement in various ways over the years, we decided to try and come up with some tips on how to stay sane – if you are tendering for work or managing the process of appointing suppliers.
A shared Google doc helped us to collaborate on the tips and this is what we came up with after a bit of chopping and editing:
Let us know what you think – does any of this sound familiar?
Creative Commons image credit – grungetextures
Great tip, Tony – many thanks!
National College will be very grateful for the feedback, as always! I’ll let the procurement team know.
One over-riding rule for all involved in procurement – remember that succinctness and focus save both you and the other parties a considerable amount of time and money! Do not include every document of vague relevance or boilerplate huge swathes of catch all but largely unnecessary text from standard procurement paperwork.
Anyone who has been involved with the several hundred page tenders from the National College – and compared them with the 20-30 page equivalents from the commercial sector – will know exactly what I mean!
Great additions, Doug – many thanks. I like those – will need to find a way of including them in an update!
I’d like to add 3 points;
I think it is good for a client to indicate which parts of the tender are most important to them (perhaps indicating a number of points to be taken into account when evaluating bids received). This indicates to potential suppliers also where they need to emphasise their bids and helps both sides get closer to their desired positions.
Clients and suppliers need to ensure they both keep in line wit HM Treasury and EU regulations. This is especially true where funding is greater than €150k (you wish) but even if the client project is part of a wider project, such as one funded by national government (remember those?), the client will need to follow HM Treasury/EU rules if total funding is >€150k. The client may need therefore to indicate that there project is part of a larger project or be open about the source of funding. Equally, suppliers will need to be open about whether they are able to supply under such arrangements.
Potential suppliers need to be open about their ‘partners’ in any bid.
Agreements regarding confidentiality, non-disclosure etc, need to be in place and stated, also any ‘remedy’ procedures in case of dispute. Often these may be ‘standard’ and relevant phraseology could be pasted into documents, subject to approval from finance, procurement and legal teams.
oh, is that 4 points, sorry.