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Why choose Euro-Bid Watch for your EU tenders? |
Thousands of EU tender opportunities become available each day. We use the Euro-Bid Watch powerful search and filter systems and our specialist knowledge to ensure that our clients receive only the notices relevant to their business. Our client base is testimony to our quality of service. So what makes procurement in the EU so complex? 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 1,000 new records are added each day to around 50,000 EU Tender Notices in the ‘live’ version of TED, where ‘live’ means EU Tender notices which have not yet expired. Our TED Alert ™system also contains a unique archive of every record going back 10 years for all entries published in the Supplement S of the Official Journal of the European Union in all languages. TED only contains archived records for five years and only in English. By the end of 2005 this exceeded 2 million, based on a current posting of around 250,200 EU Tender Notices each year. This level of activity is also set to rise.
Since May 2004, EU Tender Notices have been published in all 20 official EU languages and by 2007 this will be increased to 22 languages with the accession of Bulgaria and Romania. This development will also bring Cyrillic into the list of official EU languages. EU Institution notices are published on TED bilingually, ie 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.
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 9,000 headings with 20 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 9,000 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.
The popular document you are likely to receive is the 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.
Very similar to Requests for Proposals used by European Union institutions. 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. 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. • 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. 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. 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. 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. 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 The Answer is...... We work very closely with you to achieve the best fit search for your organisation. The careful and detailed process of designing each bespoke intelligent search begins with the online TED Alert™ application. Based on your ‘Free Trial’ requirements and the Euro-Bid Watch understanding of your business from similar profiles and desk research, we also analyse tenders and subsequent contract awards which your company or similar may have previously won. A test profile is created and executed against a mixture of archived and current EU Tender Notices. From this we can determine if further changes are required based on our deep understanding of public procurement semantics and terminology. 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.
Once your search is agreed and activated, the real advantages of working with Euro-Bid Watch come into play. Your requirements will evolve, either through supply led drivers such as new products and services or marketing pressures such as new regions and vertical markets. In addition to your requirements changing, your buyer’s environment will change due to demand led drivers. These are often governed by legal and social changes concerning issues like health and safety and the wider political and demographic ones affecting the purchasing needs of the public sector. 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. Accuracy isn’t the only watchword at Euro-Bid Watch. We also value expediency. Competitive advantage is gained when procurement intelligence delivers relevant results the moment they’re officially published, giving you the maximum time to respond. Alerts are emailed on the morning of their official publication in the Official Journal S Supplement and TED. In addition to near ‘real time’ delivery of the EU Tender Notices, Euro-Bid Watch is committed to a quick response to your bespoke requirements. These may be to shadow opportunities from a specific buyer, where you are unsure of how a certain EU Tender Notice may be worded. Drawing on Euro-Bid Watch’s 10 years worth of EU Public Procurement data and experience in interrogating, interpreting and presenting data, we are able to offer a uniquely detailed analysis of this intelligence for strategic marketing purposes. Aside from the complexity of determining the correct description for the products and services you offer, there is the equally important task of setting the correct filters on the types of notices to be sent to you. They are cross referenced at seven levels and categorised as follows: Calls 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. 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. 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. 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? 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. 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. 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. |
