The previous Chapter (Chapter 2) of this Guide presented guidelines to assist Contracting Authorities in making decisions on strategic choices regarding public procurement issues.
Indicatively, these issues concern the following:
| ● | Correspondence between the conditions in market and the award of a public contract. |
| ● | Recourse to the services of an external Consultant for supporting the public procurement process. |
| ● | Identification of the number and size of the contracts required to implement the project. |
| ● | Selection of the best way to address the need, between purchase, rental or leasing. |
| ● | Selection of the most appropriate award procedure (open, restricted, negotiated etc.) |
| ● | Selection of the award criterion (lowest price, most economically advantageous tender) |
| ● | Determination of the composition and responsibilities of the Procurement Team responsible for preparing the tender documents. |
| ● | Development of the schedule for the award procedure. |
Chapters 3 and 4 offer guidelines and instructions on how to apply the choices made regarding the award of public contracts. More specifically, an analysis is presented of the measures to be taken and the actions to be carried out in each step of the procedure, from the preparation of the tender documents through to the award of the contract, so as to ensure consistency with the strategic choices made and the legislative framework in force.
The present Chapter 3 discusses in detail the following four steps in the preparation and announcement of a tender procedure:
| 1. | Preparation of tender documents: This particular step concerns the preparation of the tender documents using the model draft tender documents (see paragraph 3.2.4), depending on the award procedure (open, restricted, simplified) and the contract scope (work, supply, service). In examining this step, the Guide provides specific instructions on how to determine the contract scope (development of Terms of Reference – Technical Specifications) and the evaluation criteria. |
| 2. | Advertising actions: Refers to the publication of the prior information notice (if a decision to publish one is taken) and of the contract notice. |
| 3. | Provision of tender documents: In this step, the Contracting Authorities make available the tender documents to the interested economic operators. |
| 4. | Provision of clarifications and supplementary information on the tender documents: The Contracting Authorities provide to interested economic operators clarifications and supplementary information on the tender documents, either on their own initiative (if required) or after relevant requests submitted by the economic operators. |
Figure 3-1: The four steps in the preparation and announcement of a tender procedure
The preparation and announcement of a tender procedure is concluded with the receipt and safekeeping of tenders. This step is relatively easy to implement, and the relevant Regulations provide detailed instructions. For these reasons, it was judged that the present Guide does not have anything more to add, and therefore this step is not presented in the discussion which follows.
The next Chapter (Chapter 4) presents the following steps of the award procedure:
For better understanding the organisation of the contents of the Guide in terms of its individual Chapters, the following pages present the flowcharts for the three award procedures (open, restricted and simplified), indicating the Chapter where each step of the procedure is discussed.
It is pointed out that the negotiated procedures (with or without publication of a contract notice) and the competitive dialogue are presented in Chapter 5 of the Guide.
Figure 3-2: Correspondence between the contents of the Guide and the steps of the open procedure
Figure 3-3: Correspondence between the contents of the Guide and the steps of the restricted procedure
Figure 3-4: Correspondence between the contents of the Guide and the steps of the simplified procedure