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EmailWhy choose Euro-Bid Watch for your EU tenders?
Over 1,500 EU tender opportunities are published daily. Our powerful search and filter systems and specialist knowledge, ensure subscribers receive notices relevant to their business. Our client base is testimony to our quality of service.
Volume Tenders Electronic Daily, or its more familiar acronym ‘TED’, is the on-line version of Supplement S of the Official Journal of the European Union. Both publish and update EU Tender Notices every working day. Currently about 1,600 new records are added daily to the 65,000 EU Tender Notices in TED, ‘live’ notices.
TED Alert ™ also
contains a unique archive of every record published
in the OJ Supplement S since 2001 in all languages.
TED only contains archived records for five years and
only in English. By the end of 2010 this will be over
2 million, based on a current posting of around 400,000
EU Tender Notices each year. This level of activity
is also set to rise. Languages Since
the beginning of 2008, EU Tender Notices have been published
in 21 official EU languages, including Cyrillic and Greek
character sets.
EU Institution notices are published on TED bilingually,
i.e. in any 2 Official Languages of the EU. If the Official
Language is non-English the translated language may or
may not be in English. As awarding authorities accept bids
in the language of the translated text as well as the official
text, those seeking English language contracts must search
non English notices for English keywords. There is a risk
in conducting these searches of cross language contamination. Common
Procurement Vocabulary The most common and conventional
method of searching is by using the CPV (Common Procurement
Vocabulary) coding system. Each notice published on TED has
to be classified by one or more of these codes.
The CPV was created in 1993 as a tool for improving transparency
and efficiency in the field of public procurement. Use
of standard terms in the CPV was designed to make it easier
for potential suppliers to identify the procurement contracts
in which they are interested. The CPV consists of approximately
9,500 headings with 21 European language variants and decimal
coding. It is generally recognised as the international
standard for classification and has been adopted by the
World Bank and many national tendering systems. Despite
its comprehensiveness, there are many pitfalls in searching
using the CPV system.
Even with 9,500 codes to choose from, there still isn’t
a code for every type of product and service. Consequently,
codes are often used incorrectly. Laziness, a failure to
understand or a failure to provide a suitable code within
the taxonomic style ranking of the CPV system results in
frequently misclassified notices. There are countless occurrences
where those responsible for classifying notices for publication
will choose the first synonymous code with a matching keyword
or keywords regardless sometimes of whether it is a service,
product or works (construction) activity.
EU
Notice TypesContract
Notice/Invitation to Tender The popular document
you are likely to receive is the Contract Notice/Invitation
to Tender (ITT). This is a contract for which you are
invited to make an offer. A short description of all
tender documents is regularly announced along with the
address from where the full document (usually the awarding
authority or an executing company on their behalf) can
be obtained. These documents are made up of several pages
containing all the details you need to know when bidding.
Corrigenda & Additional Information These will be issued where either a correction (Corrigenda) or Additional Information to a previous notice is published with a cross reference to the original notice in the form of a document number in the Referenced Notice field. Additional Information notices contain no descriptive abstract and refer to either minor corrections or the cancellation of a previous notice.
Contract Awards These contain interesting information, since they indicate that an ITT has been accepted, which supplier(s) won the tender and for what price. In some cases the name(s) of the supplier(s) and/or the price(s) paid are omitted due to confidentiality.
Prior Information Procedures Public sector awarding authorities working with an annual budget must publish a PIN or prior information notice on the ITTs planned for the coming financial year. These PINs outline the business to be done and the foreseen date of publication of the tender or the foreseen date of execution of the tender. They are an early warning and should be acted upon for two reasons: • You may start preparing an offer, check your possibilities, obtain banking guarantees, contact possible sub-contractors etc. so you are better prepared once the tender is published.• By publishing a prior information notice, the awarding authority is allowed to give a shorter deadline for the tender once it is published, so this warning time should be used efficiently.
Request for Proposals This is a document similar to an ITT. The major difference is that whilst an ITT clearly outlines what you should do, a request for proposals outlines a general framework and invites you to make proposals for what product or service you could offer. They are rare and most often used by the EU institutions (e.g. the Commission, Courts of Justice, European Investment Bank) to encourage project participation in the framework of a specific EU programme.
Calls for Expressions of Interest Very similar to Requests for Proposals used by European Union institutions.Pre-Qualification Notices These are public sector notices preceding most commonly restricted ITT's. Only companies chosen in the pre-selection will be allowed to tender for the restricted tender.
Periodic Information Notices Contracting Entities from the utilities sector (water, energy, telecoms and transport) use special types of documents to announce contracts. They make known, at least once a year by means of a periodic indicative notice (PIN) contracts they are planning for the coming financial year, with the same conditions as those given to public awarding authorities for Pre-Information.
With Competition In cases where there is a call for competition, the following conditions apply:• The notice must refer specifically to the supplies or services, which will be the subject of the contract awarded.
• The notice must indicate that the contract will be awarded by a restricted or negotiated procedure without further publication of a notice of a call for competition and invite interested parties to express their interest in writing.
• Contracting entities shall subsequently invite all candidates to confirm their interest on the basis of detailed information on the contract concerned before beginning the selection of bidders or participants in negotiations.
Without Competition * In cases where there is no call for competition, this is simply an advance warning system, informing potential suppliers that there are likely to be procurement opportunities in the coming financial year. It is not contract specific.
Qualification Systems Again these are used exclusively within the utilities sector, when a contracting entity wishes to establish and operate a system of qualification for suppliers/contractors. The idea is to set up a list capable and willing to execute future contracts. The list of companies may have a defined duration. If the duration period is greater than three years, the qualification system notice is published annually. Achilles and First Point Assessment Ltd (www.achilles.co.uk) are prime examples of such systems.
With Competition Some of these contain a call for competition. In such cases, bidders in a restricted procedure or participants in a negotiated procedure shall be selected from the qualified candidates.
Without Competition* Where there is no call for competition, as for PIN's, it is not contract specific and is a signal of intent.*Only available in the Utilities Sector
Customised
search strategy
To ensure maximum coverage, Euro-Bid Watch also accesses a unique archive database of 10 years worth of all EU public procurement notices. From the analysis of this data in any of the EU’s languages, we can assess the optimum parameters through both paring and additions to the search (i.e. related keywords or phrases which you may be unaware of). The draft results are then sent for your evaluation and feedback. This will determine if any tweaking is required prior to activation. You always have the final say as to the relevance of the leads and approval of the search.
Dynamic
search profiles
Euro-Bid Watch meets these challenges reactively and proactively by responding to your requests and regularly reviewing market sectors for changes. These are then provided to you for review and approval prior to implementation into your dynamic search strategy.
Procurement
Intelligence on Demand
EU
Tender Notices Analysis & Insight
Type
of DocumentCalls for Expressions of Interest, Requests for Proposals, Periodic Information Notices, Invitation to Tender, Qualification Systems, Contract Awards and Results of Design Contests are just some of the notices published. Not everyone requires all of these. For example Utility Qualification Systems are of no interest if you solely deal with the public sector. These notices uniquely have to be searched in a different way due to the way they are written.
Nature of the Contract
These are split into Public Works, Supplies, Services and Combined (a mix of two or more of these). All determine set value thresholds for mandatory publication with other prerequisites and caveats. They are often important in determining whether the notice is included or filtered out, e.g. where the distinction between supplying goods or services is poorly defined in the notice.
Type of Procedure
Open, Restricted, Accelerated and Negotiated are the main types. Again they can influence how or whether you can bid and therefore need to be examined before being included in your search or not. For example, unless you had already responded to a Qualification System there is no value in you receiving the subsequent Negotiated tender, since this is a prerequisite to respond.
Regulations of Procurement
These are agreed at the intergovernmental level to determine at what thresholds different organisations must published their tenders within the open forum of the Official Journal. They also regulate whether you (if domiciled outside of the EU/EEA) can bid or not, e.g. is your government a signatory to the World Trade Organisation Government Purchasing Organisation (WTO GPA) or do you have a presence within the EU/EEA?
Type of awarding authority
If you are purely vertical market driven, then you will be limited to specific types of buyer, depending on what and who you are trying to sell to. The search may need to be solely focused on specific sectors like transport (or a specific sector of transport like aviation), defense, healthcare or specific EU institutions like the Commission.
Type of bid required
If you are an SME, it may be that global bids (where the buyer is looking for a prime contractor) are not be the best route to market in this arena. We therefore need to determine whether mixed or partial bids are the best route to focus on for you.
Awarding Criteria
Depending on the price consciousness of the buyer and how big a factor this is within your selling proposition, it is important to establish whether filters are needed here. This will determine whether contracts awarded on the basis of the lowest bid (as opposed to the most economic, based on a mix of factors) should be exclusive to or excluded from your search.