Euro-bidwatch Latest tender news

New Government Commercial Agency

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 15:33:35 GMT

Changes to Crown Commercial Service

On 1 April 2026, the Crown Commercial Service and several Cabinet Office Central Commercial teams (operating under the Government Commercial Function) will join to form the Government Commercial Agency.

You can find out more about the changes here:

Crown Commercial Service becomes Government Commercial Agency

Transforming Public Procurement

Wed, 05 Mar 2025 16:06:22 GMT

Latest Information on the Public Procurement (TPP) programme.

The Crown Commercial Service have an FAQ page on the Transforming Public Procurement (TPP) programme.

https://www.crowncommercial.gov.uk/information-for-buyers-and-suppliers/transforming-public-procurement

Link to the Procurement Regulations 2024.

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2024/692/contents/made

UK Procurement Thresholds 2024

Wed, 31 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMT

The thresholds at which public procurement opportunities are subject to the full suite of UK regulations governing public contracts have been updated. Below are the revised thresholds for public contracts, utilities contracts and concession contracts from 1 January 2024, as per the amendments made to the UK regulations via the Public Procurement (Agreement on Government Procurement) (Thresholds) (Amendment) Regulations 2023

The Public Contracts Regulations

Supplies & Services (except subsidised services contracts)

Central Government bodies £139,688
Others £214,904

Subsidised services contracts

All bodies £214,904

Works (including subsidised works contracts)

All bodies £5,372,609

Light Touch Regime for Services

All bodies £663,540

Small lots

Supplies and services £70,778
Works £884,720

The Utilities Contracts Regulations 2016

Supplies and Services

All sectors £429,809

Works

All sectors £5,372,609

Small lots

Supplies and Services £70,778
Works £884,720

The Concession Contracts Regulations 2016

Concession contracts £5,372,609

The Defence and Security Public Contracts Regulations 2011

Supplies and Services

All sectors £429,809

Works

All sectors £5,372,609

Small lots

Supplies and Services £70,778
Works £884,720

Contracts Finder

Mon, 26 Jul 2021 00:00:00 GMT

What is Contracts Finder?

The Public Contracts Regulations 2015 set out a number of rules for publication of public procurement notices on the Contracts Finder portal. For SME's and voluntary or charitable organisations (VCSEs) Contracts Finder offers easier access to public contract opportunities under the WTO GPA procurement thresholds necessitating publication on Find A Tender (FTS).

The notice types found on contract finder are:

1. Early engagement

Inviting feedback from industry on early procurement ideas (also known as ‘pre-procurement dialogue’).

2. Future opportunities

Information on procurements that are likely to be published in the future. The notice can be used to indicate when existing frameworks, or approved supplier lists or contracts are going to be available to be bid on.

3. Opportunities

Live invitations to tender. Used to seek to seek supply chain partners to bid for open public sector opportunities, or to tender for
subcontracts in support of delivering a public sector contract, or for lower value contracts.

4. Awarded contracts

Procurement opportunities that have been awarded to a supplier/suppliers.

UK Find A Tender (FTS)

Fri, 29 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMT

On the 1st of January 2021, OJEU/TED was replaced by a Find A Tender (FTS) service for UK procurement. If contract spend is over the current WTO GPA thresholds then tenders legally need to be posted on Find a Tender.

We have successfully adapted our multi-lingual search & alerting service to continue to work with the EU's TED / OJEU portal (TED Alert) and the UK's new Find a Tender System (FTS Alert) providing additional alerting flexibility for our customers.

UK Procurement Thresholds 2021

Mon, 04 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMT

The UK procurement thresholds are governed by the WTO’s GPA. These thresholds are not subject to review or change until January 2022 and are:

The Public Contracts Regulations

Supplies & Services (except subsidised services contracts)
Schedule 1 bodies £122,976
Others £189,330
Subsidised services contracts
All bodies £189,330
Works (including subsidised works contracts)
All bodies £4,733,252
Light Touch Regime for Services
All bodies £663,540
Small lots
Supplies and services £70,778
Works £884,720

The Utilities Contracts Regulations

Supplies and Services
All sectors £378,660
Works
All sectors £4,733,252
Small lots
Supplies and Services £70,778
Works £884,720

The Concession Contracts Regulations

Concession contracts £4,733,252

The Defence and Security Public Contracts Regulations
Supplies and Services
All sectors £378,660
Works
All sectors £4,733,252
Small lots
Supplies and Services £70,778
Works £884,720

New healthcare procurement frameworks

jc@euro-bidwatch.com (John Chudleigh) — Sat, 02 Mar 2019 13:44:28 GMT

NHSX is a new joint organisation that will be responsible for digital, data and technological initiatives across the NHS. It aims to take forward digital transformation initiatives within the NHS and introduce the latest digital services and technology in the healthcare system.

A statement from the Department of Health and Social Care states that, among its responsibilities, NHSX will reform procurement by:

“helping the NHS buy the right technology through the application of technology standards, streamlined spend controls and new procurement frameworks that support our standards”

NHSX will work closely with the NHS and the wider digital economy, to ensure that patients and staff have access to world-class digital services. Training will be part of this to ensure that staff are “digital ready”.

New EU Procurement Threshold Values from Jan 1, 2018

jc@euro-bidwatch.com (John Chudleigh) — Sat, 13 Jan 2018 13:03:51 GMT

The new threshold values have been increased by 6% and apply from January 1, 2018

For contracting authorities such as central government departments/agencies and local authorities:

€144,000 for contracts awarded by central government bodies.
€221,000 for contracts awarded by local or regional government bodies, or for authorities operating in the defense sector.
€5,548,000 for works contracts to be awarded by any contracting authority.

For contracting authorities in the utilities sector:

€443,000 for contracts as part of procurement for services.
€5,548,000 for works contracts.

£2bn infrastructure framework

jc@euro-bidwatch.com (John Chudleigh) — Sat, 18 Nov 2017 08:15:37 GMT

Scape Group has published details of its £2bn civil engineering and infrastructure framework.

A Prior Information Notice for the Scape National Framework, which will run for four years from October next year, has been published.

The framework will include a total lot value of £1.6bn in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and a £400M lot specifically for the public sector in Scotland. An OJEU Contract Notice will be published in January next year.

https://www.newcivilengineer.com/business-culture/2bn-infrastructure-framework-unveiled/10025158.art...

Best practice e-Library improving public procurement compliance to be unveiled

jc@euro-bidwatch.com (John Chudleigh) — Fri, 29 Sep 2017 00:00:00 GMT

The European Commission will next month unveil a new tool for sharing of good practices to improve the compliance and quality of public procurement across the EU.

It hopes the e-Library will offer a number of tangible benefits from the sharing of good practices in the area of public procurement such as improved efficiency and effectiveness, and better value-for-money.

http://central-government.governmentcomputing.com/news/eu-to-present-an-e-library-of-public-procurem...

SMEs still being shut out

jc@euro-bidwatch.com (John Chudleigh) — Sat, 02 Sep 2017 09:19:28 GMT

Half of Whitehall spend goes on mega-deals, report claims

More than half of the contracts awarded by the UK government in 2015 were worth at least €100m, despite Whitehall efforts to boost the involvement of small- and medium-sized businesses in public procurement, according to a report by the Taxpayers’ Alliance.

The low-tax campaign group found that Whitehall is vastly more dependent on large public contracts – which tend to be scooped up by outsourcing giants such as Serco, Capita and G4S – than any other EU country.

http://publictechnology.net/articles/news/smes-still-being-shut-out-half-whitehall-spend-goes-mega-d...

NHS advertise national contracts worth £190m

jc@euro-bidwatch.com (John Chudleigh) — Thu, 02 Feb 2017 19:06:20 GMT

Ten national contracts for the provision of procurement services have been advertised by the Department of Health worth £1900m
https://www.hsj.co.uk/topics/finance-and-efficiency/bidders-sought-for-190m-nhs-procurement-services...

Brexit Means Brexit, But What Does Brexit Mean?

jc@euro-bidwatch.com (John Chudleigh) — Sat, 22 Oct 2016 08:47:56 GMT

Brexit Seminar Series 2016/17 King’s College London Centre for European Law

The UK’s recent decision to leave the EU will not only have profound implications for it & EU but also for the wider world in terms of global trade.

To address this, the Centre of European Law King’s College London is hosting a series of evening seminars @ £20 each, examining these issues and the likely options resulting from the outcome of whatever legal settlement is negotiated between the UK the EU at some unspecified point in the future. These will include The Swiss Model*, WTO, State Aid and Public Procurement amongst others, over the next six months.

To quote the Centre for European Law ‘an outstanding array’ of King’s College’ expertise will conduct these seminars over this academic year ‘covering twelve different areas of law on which Brexit is likely to have an impact’.

The full details of these and registration links are available at: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/law/research/centres/european/Brexit-Seminar-Series-Schedule.pdf

Topics already covered by recent open lectures were ‘Opening Transatlantic Markets’ and ‘After Brexit: is the EEA an option for the UK?’ Details of some conference materials are available to download at: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/law/research/centres/european/index.aspx

Whether a legal professional or not, if you are interested in gaining a better insight on the implications these huge legal and constitutional changes will have on you and your company, inside or outside the single market, these seminars are to be recommended.

*Already presented.

Notes from some Small Islands?

jc@euro-bidwatch.com (John Chudleigh) — Fri, 30 Sep 2016 12:26:47 GMT

Brexit means Brexit’, so chimed the somewhat circular and cleverly obfuscated reassurance from the UK’s new PM Theresa May in her attempts to reassure both the Eurosceptic wing of the Conservative party and 17.4M (52%) of citizens voting to leave the EU on that momentous day June 23 2016. Since no one knows what Brexit really means other than the invocation of the Lisbon Treaty’s Article 50 and the UK being outside of the EU, this statement is an Oxymoron since it is both committal and non-committal.
Paraphrasing a rediscovered World War II poster, we phlegmatic Brits will ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ because like The Eagles’ Hotel California, although we can check out (of the EU) anytime we like, maybe, just maybe, we can never leave?

Senior partner, John Chudleigh has shared a personal perspective on Brexit with the European affairs blog readers - read the full article here:

http://guests.blogactiv.eu/2016/08/25/notes-from-some-small-islands-with-apologies-to-bill-bryson/

NHS Procurement Consultation Requirements and Brexit

jc@euro-bidwatch.com (John Chudleigh) — Fri, 16 Sep 2016 09:55:25 GMT

What are the implications of BREXIT on procurement practice and the relationship between procurement policy guidance and consultation best practice .? Read full article here: https://www.consultationinstitute.org/nhs-procurement-brexit/?platform=hootsuite

Negotiating new Brexit relationships

jc@euro-bidwatch.com (John Chudleigh) — Fri, 02 Sep 2016 07:27:45 GMT

Will the UK use it’s membership of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the European Economic Area (EEA) as potential platforms for negotiating the new UK-EU trade relationship?.

Read the full article by Ana Bobic and Josephine van Zeben

Brexit: the end of public procurement rules or business as usual?

jc@euro-bidwatch.com (John Chudleigh) — Fri, 12 Aug 2016 09:05:17 GMT

Is there anything you should consider right now?

The current expectation is that the UK will not give notice in 2016 and the whole of the two year period will be needed to negotiate the exit provisions, therefore, in practice the British exit (Brexit) date cannot be before January 2019

For the time being, the rules apply as they always have done. The key thing to consider now is whether any contracts are affected by European Commission grants and/or State aid and determine what effect Brexit will have on that funding. Another key consideration is whether long term government projects that are currently being procured will rely on free movement (of people or goods), and, if so, what contractual provisions could be inserted to provide for a scenario where there is no free movement.

Read the full article by Victoria Moorcroft here..
http://www.twobirds.com/en/news/articles/2016/uk/brexit-end-of-public-procurement-rules?platform=hoo...

€5.3 million tender to support European cloud initiative

jc@euro-bidwatch.com (John Chudleigh) — Sun, 31 Jul 2016 08:50:19 GMT

Helix Nebula launch a tender to support the deployment of high-performance computing and big-data capabilities for scientific research.

A pre-commercial procurement tender covers R&D services relevant to the design, development and pilot use of a platform to support hybrid cloud environments. The HNSciCloud pre-commercial procurement project is funded by ten of Europe’s top research organisations and by the European Commission.

There will be a Tender Information Day hosted by CERN in Geneva, Switzerland on 7 September.

Read the full article by Antony Savvas at: http://www.channelbiz.co.uk/2016/07/25/e5-3-million-tender-support-european-cloud-initiative/

How to write a successful tender response

jc@euro-bidwatch.com (John Chudleigh) — Fri, 29 Jul 2016 13:56:37 GMT

Tender bid tips

Responding to a tender can be an intimidating experience. Often the language and terminology is obtuse, requirements appear to go way beyond the apparent immediate needs of the contract and the detail required seems obsessive. Contracts are won, and lost, on the quality of the responses submitted and it’s important to remember that this is your main, and sometimes only, opportunity to:
• Introduce your business
• Explain your approach and solutions to the tender’s needs
• Stand out from the competition.

So, well before you start your response, familiarise yourself with the tender documentation, and ensure that:
• You really want to bid for this contract (you can deliver it, it is not too risky or costly)
• You can meet the deadlines for submission of information
• You have the resources you need, including staff, to be able to write the response

Putting together a winning response will take dedicated time and resources. To help you get an idea of how much time and what resources will be needed, it is good practice to run the response process as a project:

Assign a response leader (project manager) – someone who will own the response, who has the authority to ensure that resources are available and the leadership to see that timescales are met. They will also know who the subject matter experts are in the organisation to go to for any necessary, detailed information.

Create a plan, showing what tasks need to be undertaken, by whom and when they are required. The value of reviewing the response before it is finalised cannot be underestimated, so any plan should include enough time to review one or more drafts to ensure that the tender response is the best that it can be. Also, take into account the length of time it will take to lodge the response. Where hard copies are requested, the printing, binding and delivery of the finished response document will need to be taken into consideration.

Remember to take in to account the time required to include documentation or information from third parties. Often the response will need input or evidence from your insurance company, accountant and company solicitor. You may also need to submit testimonials or references from existing clients. As a rule, any input required that is outside your direct control will always take much longer than expected, so it pays to get these underway early in the response process. When obtaining information from third parties, always provide a clear deadline for when you would like this information to be provided and include these delivery milestones in your plan.

Demonstrate how and why you are best placed to win the tender – you will need to articulate your company’s experience and its ability to deliver and the most compelling approach is through the use of case studies or real-life examples. Try and use recent case studies, but don’t be afraid of using examples from solutions that are very different to that which you are tendering for, particularly if the business results reflect those which you’d expect to achieve if you win this tender.

The quality of the writing used in the response will be critical to its success. Try and express your response using simple and compelling language; responses will generally be evaluated and marked against a scorecard and you must communicate your compliance and ability to deliver (and provide value) against each and every question. Note the evaluation criteria and relative weighting/ranking of individual questions, giving particular attention to areas of higher weightings/rankings. There will inevitably be some duplication in your answers to a number of questions – remember that different sections of the response may go to different departments, so tailor every answer to the question asked.
Address each question as if your capabilities, strengths, skills and resources are unknown to the evaluator, describe your methodologies and examples in detail and show how your business capabilities are appropriate for this job. Always try to reflect the language and terminology used in the tender documents and to limit your use of jargon. The writing style should also be persuasive and business-like without overstating your capacity or capability. The sentences need to be positive, giving confidence that you will provide the best product or service; use words such as ‘will’ and ‘can’ to reinforce this. Keep sentences short and to the point.

The layout and design of your document is an important consideration when developing your tender response. For some tenders, this is not possible as the tender requirements stipulate that an application form or electronic format is to be used. However, in instances where this is not restricted, consider the design of the document and alternate ways in which information can be conveyed.

Where possible (within the constraints of the format stipulated), consider including illustrations, be they charts or graphs or tables and diagrams. Including pictures of the team who will be delivering the service or photographs of your products will also help your response stand out.

Review: Before lodging your response, check that you have met all of the tender requirements and try to have you response reviewed thoroughly by two or three individuals, who should be urged to look for everything from punctuation and grammatical errors to the accuracy and realism of any figures provided, such as delivery timelines, pricing, and resourcing. Simple mistakes in any of these areas can have a large impact on how your business is perceived during the evaluation process and, in some cases, dramatically affect the competitiveness of your bid.

Finally, it’s important to remember that tendering is not purely price driven. You must demonstrate a solution that is economically advantageous to the buyer and underline your ability to service the requirements efficiently and effectively. A response that can demonstrate capability to deliver the service at a cost-effective rate will usually triumph over a cheaper supplier who has not demonstrated clear capability or value for money.

Author: Sean Jacob

How to win!

jc@euro-bidwatch.com (John Chudleigh) — Sun, 10 Jan 2016 00:00:00 GMT

‘in or out’ – there’s still business to be won.

Without wanting to sound too much like a Europhile ‘Keep Calm And Sell to the Continentals’ – I am struck by the raw fact that before the recent Euro downturn, the largest growth in exports was experienced by the USA and Switzerland. Neither country is in the EU. Thereby suggesting ‘in or out’ – there’s still business to be won.

Carry on Disclosing – Concluding an investigation into EU OJEU Contract Award Transparency against Perceived Corruption

jc@euro-bidwatch.com (John Chudleigh) — Mon, 30 Nov 2015 00:00:00 GMT

Christopher H. Bovis’s says in his book EU Public Procurement Law‡ ’One of the most important principles of the Public Procurement Directives is the principle of transparency…it services two main objectives:

Introducing a system of openness into public purchasing in the member states, so a greater degree of accountability should be established and potential direct discrimination on grounds of nationality should be eliminated.
Ensuring that transparency in public procurement represents a substantial basis for a system of best practice for both parts of the equation, but is of particular relevance to the supply side, to the extent that the latter has a more proactive role in determining the needs of the demand side.’

Quite, but I would add a third ensuring that transparency extends to an obligation/social contract on buyers fully disclosing in the public domain how our money is spent.
Somewhat belatedly following up on the last blog (remember?) I picked up on the zeitgeist of transparency and disclosure currently abroad throughout the EU and wider world. One of the reasons for the delay was a wish to extend the examination to the whole of 2013 (with the archives only becoming available in January) and to all member states.

Previously I said I’d examine in more detail the issue of publication of the Referenced Document number or to give it its more prosaic description, ‘Part IV.3.2 of the award: Previous publication(s) concerning the same contract’. These should appear in each OJEU disclosed Contract Award. I realise this all sounds highly esoteric and the procurement geek’s equivalent to angels dancing on pinheads, but is in fact, along with the disclosure of the contract award itself, a bellwether on not only openness in who won a publicly funded contract and at what price but also how it can be linked back to the original offer through a simple audit trail. When framed within the context of all OJEU transactions equating to roughly 22% of 20% of the EU’s economic output/GDP equivalent to something like €570bn* of European taxpayers’ money, there’s nothing esoteric about it at all.
In initial investigations for the first part of the blog, I was prompted by a PwC/Ecorys report commissioned by OLAF (the EU’s Anti-Fraud Office) examining losses incurred on public budgets in eight member states with €1.4-2.2bn/£1.2-1.9bn being lost based on TED data for 2010. In these initial investigations, whilst it was encouraging to see that overall, disclosure rates had considerably improved since the mid 1990s, it became apparent that the newer member states appeared to be the most compliant. Great you might think and given that with a neophytes’ enthusiasm comes a wish to make a positive impression, there’s nothing necessarily out of context. However, it has to be seen against the wider backdrop of transparency and corruption and this is where something of a paradox is created. The greater the level of perceived corruption in a member state, the greater the levels of contract award disclosure. Are you keeping up at the back there?

Claudius’s Conundrum

To explain this conundrum let’s start with how all the EU member states have performed, including the EU institutions, e.g. the Commission, Parliament Courts of Justice, European Investment Bank etc. in disclosing the number of contract awards to the number of contract notices. A rolling average has been calculated over the previous three year period 2011-2013, examining over 930K records. This generated unusual results on two levels.

With the exception of the Netherlands, Spain and the EU Institutions, all the other countries with award disclosure rates above the EU average are those only joining within the previous 10 years and in the case of Bulgaria & Romania, seven. Moreover, it wasn’t much more than a decade before that, that any emerged, blinking from centrally planned totalitarianism with scant regard for the rule of law or the disclosure of anything bar propaganda. In contrast, all those languishing below the European average, with the exception of Slovakia are all 20th century western market economies, never under the COMECON† yoke.
With one marginal exception Slovenia, they all manage to report higher levels of awards than tenders i.e. +100% over a three year average. That equates within that group of countries in the period examined, an additional 15K contract awards, equivalent to 16% of all the tenders published for which there appear to be no original invitations to tender. So why is this? The initial suppositions aren’t very encouraging. Are awards published for Tenders that were never advertised or is there a culture of publishing multiple awards against one contract notice? There is no practical way of proving either without either the tireless examination of each contract or a statistically significant sample. For the latter, there’s a legal vehicle for this where results are published without the contracting entity ever needing to advertise the original tender and that’s the Voluntary ex Ante Transparency Notice (see Part 1), but these aren’t being accounted for in this study, since there’s nothing to trace it back to so that’s a red herring.

Fig. 1 Average Disclosure Rates of Contract Awards 2011-2013

The second puzzle examines the disclosure of the link back to the original contract, i.e. a nice clear transparent audit trail. Over the examined period 2011-2013, 31% of contract awards failed to disclose details of the original contract notice, accounting for a staggering 141K contracts. Any guesses what the value of all this would be? The EU average is dragged down by France publishing 26% of all awards in this period with its poor disclosure rate of only 62%. Again, with the exception of the EU Institutions, 8 of the 18 states with above average Previous Publication disclosure rates are the former COMECON countries. The UK surprisingly languishes third from bottom but then seen within the prism of the rest of this study perhaps not so.

All this could be put down to buyers’ collective administrative laziness without easy access to the original tender or simply a failure to record or know what the OJEU reference was. This sounds more likely than any malign hidden agenda concealing and obfuscating possible potential attempts to link the award with the original contract. It may also be that despite the perceived corruption in many of the countries reporting high levels of disclosure that they also display correspondingly higher levels of enthusiasm for being in the EU, manifesting itself in more positive engagement in its byzantine administrative complexities although this doesn’t hold true for Slovenia, the Czech Republic or Cyprus.

Fig. 2 Average Disclosure rates of Previous Publications concerning the same contract 2011-2013

Despite the Commission’s recent self-damning report on the endemic levels of corruption permeating at various degrees through all levels of EU public life, seen from the perceptions of each member states’ citizens EU Anti-Corruption Report they couldn’t quite bring themselves to rank each member state, conveniently avoiding any discomfiting political issues and upsetting anyone.

Each member state has therefore been ranked according to their average corruption perception index score over the same period 2011-13, based on Transparency International’s figures, since they’re beholden to no one. This is an index in which they have ‘ranked 177 countries and territories around the world on their perceived levels of public sector corruption’. The scores rank from 0 Highly Corrupt through to 100 Very Clean. For details on this visit their excellent site cpi.transparency.org

Figure 3 transposes the average 2011-13 CPI rankings for each member state against the disclosure rates in Figures 1 & 2. The Scandinavians are ranked in the top 10 in what Transparency International calls ‘Very Clean’. In contrast the ‘less clean’ Balkan member states are ranked at the bottom. Any countries in the bottom 10 (thankfully not represented in the EU) are referred to as ‘Highly Corrupt’. Set against the back drop of this ranking the other graphs reveal something unusual, in that the lower a countries’ perceived corruption index, the higher generally the award disclosure rate. There is also a slight upward trend in the disclosure of a previous publication, i.e. the original tender. This is counterintuitive since the trend should show them all going roughly in the same direction.

Fig. 3 Comparison of 2011-2013 Average Corruption Index Rankings of EU states against Average RN & Award disclosure rates 2011-2013

Known Unknowns or No Honestly?

In an attempt to try to present this more simply and effectively, Fig. 4 aggregates the figures for each member state according to their CPI grouping by Transparency International. There is now clearly a discernible downward trend in the disclosure rates of countries’ contract award data against their decreasing levels of perceived corruption. There is also a marginal upward trend in the disclosure rate of countries’ previous documents as the levels of transparency increase as perhaps one might expect.

Fig. 4 Average Disclosure Rates against Corruption Perception Groupings for 2013

The below table aggregates the CPI averages for the period 2011-2013 collected from Transparency International with an attempted emulation of the same shading used by TI in their excellent infographic cpi.transparency.org/cpi2013/infographic/ for ease of visual representation. Apologies to TI if it isn’t exactly right.

To put some perspective on this, two further rungs down the league table and you hit rock bottom with the lowest Score group 0-9 or ‘Highly Corrupt’ occupied by Afghanistan, North Korea & Somalia.

So having dragged you through this minefield you might expect me to cut to the chase revealing some insightful conclusion. Is it a sort of zero sum game whereby the trade-off for less corruption is less transparency or are the figures skewed by the simple fact that the overly high (+100%) disclosure rates from the more corrupt countries (as perceived by Transparency International) in themselves reveal something not quite right?

Or, should we be guided by Prof. Nick Black who recently dismissed the most established method of measuring NHS hospital mortality as having no value and simply ignore these figures?

I don’t know, but it is something the Commission should commission (no pun intended) someone to look at more closely. Step forward Transparency International?

I’ll leave the last words to the peerless and existential Donald Rumsfeld, ex. US Secretary of State for Defense [sic]

“there are known knowns, there are things that we know that we know, there are known unknowns, that is to say there are things that we now know we don’t know but there are also unknown unknowns…”

Indeed Don, indeed.

Claudius
‡ Edward Elgar Publishing ISBN 978-1-84720-947-4

* Based on 22% of 20% of the aggregated averages for the EU for 2011-2013 from Statista: www.statista.com/statistics/279447/gross-domestic-product-gdp-in-the-european-union-eu/ . According to a 2011 OECD report ‘On average, 22% of the total value of public procurement in OECD countries that are also members of the EU are published in the OJEU’

† COMECON or Council for Mutual Economic Assistance was the Soviet Union’s response to the OECD and consisted of the former communist Central and Eastern European states.

How is value determined in awarding OJEU contracts?

jc@euro-bidwatch.com (John Chudleigh) — Fri, 30 Oct 2015 00:00:00 GMT

Blink and you’d probably have missed it, but the Government, adding a seemingly perverse twist on the erstwhile Transport Secretary Stephen Byers’ hapless special advisor Jo Moore’s infamous epithet, thought that the 31st January 2013 was a good day to bury good news. Why? Well it was then that the Public Services (Social Value) Act receiving its Royal Assent, came into force, requiring the public sector in England and oddly ‘some Welsh bodies’ defined by www.publictechnology.net as ‘those not solely or mainly under the jurisdiction of the Welsh Assembly Government’ to comply with the new law, so local authorities, Whitehall, the NHS, Housing associations, emergency services etc. Such a law as yet doesn’t apply to Scotland or Northern Ireland.

Sponsored as a Private Members’ Bill by Tory MP Chris White in 2010 as the Public Services (Social Enterprise & Social Value) Bill, it perhaps understandably attracted widespread cross-party support.

In an age of belt tightening, austerity, etc. the public sector increasingly has to finely balance the competing issues of maximising value against reduced funding. It would be difficult enough if demand was a constant but it isn’t, with a seemingly insatiable increase being met upon core public services over the next few years. The Act therefore is designed to influence the pre-procurement stages of tendering so that social value is properly accounted for. What therefore is social value? Is it an unquantifiable warm feel good thing organisations espouse in their ‘core values’ or corporate governance mission statements or is there more to it? One thing is self evident and that is that contracts cannot be awarded on price alone but must factor in socio-economic, environmental and well-being issues which must be of collective benefit to the communities they serve. A crude but very real example is would Primark if it were in the public sector have been allowed to accept bids from the Rana Plaza textile factory in Bangladesh?
Oddly, the basic principles of the act i.e. that price isn’t the ‘be all’ have always existed within the EU’s procurement rules, albeit within the confines of commercial considerations. The awarding criteria procedures allow for basically two choices, the cheapest and the most economically advantageous tender. These contain a mix of commercial and technical criteria beyond price including Delivery/Completion Date, Running Costs, Profitability, Aesthetic characteristics and Technical Assistance to name but a few. However little thought was ever given to the wider considerations of communities and their ‘well-being’ other than that open procurement in the single market would bring best value for the tax payer. Well that was the idea at least.

Within the UK now, legislation now underpins taking the interpretation of ‘Most Economic Bid’ as the awarding criteria beyond commercial issues easily quantifiable on a balance sheet. These and Social Values will now have to jostle for equal or perhaps in time via back door positive discrimination, unequal billing as commissioning bodies try to demonstrate how squeaky clean and right on they are. Research borne out by Social Enterprise UK, one of the major forces behind the new Act, shows there’s an appetite amongst commissioning bodies for ‘delivering social value, with 75% of survey respondents already engaging with suppliers to increase social value’. However, they go onto to say that ‘the same research showed that 41% of authorities pointed to a lack of experience as a barrier to developing this approach further’ illustrating quite an alarming gap between intent and reality.

The facts do bear out Social Enterprise’s research and it is clearly still very early days. For 2012 Price and Quality were jointly King in the weighting stakes, closely followed by Technical Support, Delivery and other commercial considerations. Out of all the UK’s publicly advertised tenders for 2012 (96% of which encouragingly were based on a mix of criteria – see below) only 12% actually disclosed weighting values. Moreover, out of these only 13% contained awarding criteria in their weighting which could be construed as social values. So this means less that 2% of tenders last year made reference to social value issues. These were variously referred to as:

• (Undefined) Additional Benefits
• Apprenticeships
• Carbon Efficiency/Footprint
• Corporate Governance
• Environmental
• Equal Opportunities/Diversity
• Sustainability

So nothing about tax compliance as a social value yet but who knows? It’s a start you might think if a supporter. Well don’t get your hopes up too high. The percentage weightings on these criteria are only between 2 and 15 and remember we’re looking at less than 2% of UK tenders in total for last year.

The legislation is there, according to Chris White MP in Patrick Buller’s excellent article on the Social Value Act in The Guardian on the 5th February to stop the ‘supermarketisation of public services outsourcing’ and in so doing facilitate better opportunities for Social Enterprises so they’re not always squeezed out by big corporations. Yet references to Social Enterprises only occurred in 1% of tenders advertised in the UK last year. Clearly there’s still a long way to go and the one thing hard to fathom is how on earth any of this is going to be measured and therefore enforced? Will a regulatory body called something like OFVAL be established specifically tasked with policing public sector purchasing criteria and how would such rules be defined?

Still, one mustn’t be too dispirited and these things are all relative. Compared to much of Europe, the UK looks good in at least awarding the vast majority of its contracts through a mix of awarding criteria.

A like for like comparison on the Social Value Act isn’t possible but what’s interesting is that within existing Public Procurement procedures many countries preferred awarding criteria are simply price related when awarding contracts.
Figure 1 shows the European Averages for last year. 63% of all tenders advertised throughout the EU and beyond (EEA, EFTA & Switzerland through the WTO Govt. Purchasing Agreement) involved a mix of award criteria, with 32% having none other than price with 5% either not specifying or declaring they’re not applicable

Breaking this out reveals what might appear like some very strange bedfellows with the UK ranking third behind France and Switzerland in the mix of awarding criteria. Put another way for last year, not one of Switzerland’s publicly awarded OJEU contracts through the WTO GPA was judged on price alone and in France’s case it was only 3% and the UK’s 4%. Further down the ranking the EU Institutions i.e. the Commission, European Investment Bank, European Parliament, European Environment Agency etc. award 20% of their contracts on the basis of cheapest price and so on. All those therefore in Figure 1 are above the European average for having a mix of awarding criteria.

Come on down, the price is right!
Figure 3 shows the ranking of states falling below the European average. The top states, in particular Malta, Slovakia, Lithuania & Romania are in the Bargain Basement procurement league all awarding over 80% of their public procurement contracts solely on the basis of lowest price. This group is largely made up all Central, Eastern and with the exception of Spain, Southern European member states, yet oddly states like Luxembourg still award over 50% of their contracts on the basis of cheapest price too. It is understandable perhaps for the bulk purchase of commodity items like toilet rolls but for anything more complex be it a Service, Supplies or Works project it seems an odd approach. The reasons for this are not known and would involve considerable research to shed light on but this is what is submitted collectively by these countries’ awarding authorities to the OPOCE and analysed and presented below by yours truly. Given that the ongoing Euro and debt crisis are hardly waning, pressures on keeping public purse costs down are likely to be even greater and therefore at odds with any similar attempts across Europe to enforce a more holistic approach to the concept of value for money.

As already stated, one of the objectives of the EU Internal Market’s open procurement regime was to ensure better value for money for the European Tax Payer. It is difficult to know whether the literal interpretation of that across many pan European public purchasing organisations is simply to find the lowest cost rather than using more sophisticated decision making procedures to find the most cost effective solution but that on the face of it seems to be the case. As Professor Sue Arrowsmith, Director of the Public Procurement Research Group within Nottingham University’s School of Law points out in her publication EU Public Procurement Law: An Introduction ‘Ensuring the wise expenditure of public money and improving the quality of public services are not per se objectives that the EU is, in general, competent to pursue, and general power to implement policies to this effect cannot be found in the powers to adopt secondary legislation. A more specific argument to support the view that the EU regime is – or, at least, can be – concerned to ensure value for money might be that an internal market can only work if public purchasers behave ‘efficiently’ in choosing the best supplier. The “Invisible Hand” of the market can work to allocate resources effectively, including in international trade, only if purchasers that seek value for money actually do so effectively, and only in these circumstances will the most efficient firms survive and develop, ensuring that the benefits of competition in the market are realised. It can be argued that whilst commercial pressure ensures that private sector firms obtain their requirements from the most competitive source, this cannot be assumed to be the case with the public sector, even if it does not engage in discriminatory behaviour. Thus, it might be argued, it is necessary to regulate the award of contracts in the public sector to ensure efficient behaviour.’

Maybe the Social Value Act, whose timing is clearly prescient with the current zeitgeist for higher standards from our institutions, both public and private, is unwittingly the progenitor to Ms. Arrowsmith’s perhaps academic suggestion for pan European regulation in the awarding of public contracts to ensure efficient behaviour whatever that may mean?

Competition- Know Your Enemy?

jc@euro-bidwatch.com (John Chudleigh) — Thu, 01 Aug 2013 00:00:00 GMT

By knowing your competitors, you know yourselves better too

Everyone loves a good Latin maxim don’t they? I detect a faint grumbling; memories of the drudgery of rote learning ‘amo, amas, amat’ and all that. Okay, maybe not everyone. There may have previously been an over dependence on ancient precedent, but has the pendulum swung too far? I say yes, and in this continuing blog series about the relentlessly exciting world of EU tender sales, I look to another world, that of the past, for inspiration and information in your quest to win Euro business. Like rugby, going backwards is a good way to go forward.

The above quote from Ovid’s Metamorphoses is perhaps made memorable by its contradiction with the Roman spirit. As such great martial innovators, the Romans relied first and foremost on their own military ideas, and admitting the prowess of a foe was often denied by strict honour. While in business today thinking about one’s competition is more natural, assessing your competition thoroughly is an area in which many businesses could improve. When competing for EU tenders, the strengths and weaknesses of the competition can be all important.

Fas est ab hoste doceri – It is right to learn, even from the enemy.

A slightly altered translation gets closer, for me, to the imperative, exhaustive nature of the maxim; even when we think we might know everything there is to know, there is still more reward in knowing the competition.
The Romans owe one of their most defining victories to accurately assessing their competition. The First Punic War (264-241BC) was won by usurping Carthaginian naval hegemony, the Romans having captured a Carthaginian vessel and imitated its superior design. Their genius was to add another innovation, a ramming and boarding device (corvus) which fixed a Roman ship to a Carthaginian one, effectively allowing them to board and turn the naval battle (Carthaginian strength) into a land battle (Roman strength). So the war was won and Roman world domination set in motion.
I know your ambitions are more modest; nevertheless, like the Romans, you can strive to know your competition as thoroughly as possible, and win that business, with the help of these few trusty clues.

• Do they have incumbent advantage? Only one in five bidders manages to unseat an incumbent. Is your competition over reliant on incumbent advantage? Complacency is a fault easily highlighted. What can you do to make the buyer confident of a seamless transition?

• Geography. Knowing the locale, language and customs of your potential client can be a key advantage. How far can this be said about your competitors? Do you need local representation?

• Client Competence. How well is your competitors’ product suited to the client? Can they utilise it properly? Again, will language and cultural differences strengthen or weaken your competitive edge?

• Pricing. How much does the competing product cost? Lowering your price often seems like an obvious way to beat a rival, but be careful- demonstrate a record in delivering value for money, not lowering cost, that will motivate a buyer.

• Time Frame. How quickly can your competitors deliver results? For how long have your competitors offered their product or service?

These are some of the avenues by which you can assess the enemy, and come up with that all important competitive advantage. Of course, by knowing your competitors, you know yourselves better too. Next week we take a look at another aspect of your product’s qualification for market, uniqueness. What do you have that they don’t? Our corvi, if you will…

Bona Fortuna!

Scape open applications for £1bn National Major Works Framework

jc@euro-bidwatch.com (John Chudleigh) — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 00:00:00 GMT

£1bn National Major Works Framework.

Local authority controlled company Scape < http://www.scapebuild.co.uk/> ; has issued a tender for their £1bn National Major Works Framework.

With existing arrangements nearing total project value capacity, Scape has invited expressions of interest from contractors for the delivery of tightly budgeted and time controlled projects on behalf of public sector organisations.

Submissions can be made until 26 November

CBI Survey and reform of the public procurement system

jc@euro-bidwatch.com (John Chudleigh) — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 00:00:00 GMT

The UK coalition government’s proposed reforms of the £230bn pa public procurement system seem like a curate’s egg according to the latest CBI survey, i.e. good in parts.

Good Egg

Respondents thought reforms were on the right track, i.e. the need for simpler and cheaper procedures, better access for SMEs and the need for better information on future opportunities.

Bad Egg

However this was qualified with a poorer response on its implementation. Moreover, only 7% of the 100 respondents, more than half of which were SMEs, thought public procurement was being delivered well. No one thought it was being delivered well. Oh dear, back to the drawing board chaps!

There are clearly contradictions in this Cabinet Office driven initiative according to the CBI’s procurement panel chairman Keith Craven the CEO of Balfour Beatty. “The government has the right policy solutions, but as suppliers, we are yet to feel the changes on the ground. Procurement reform needs to be part of a larger conversation about industrial policy and public service reform where industry wants to play its part.”

Cue Lord Tarzan intervening before breakfast, lunch and dinner replete with Basil Fawlty gait on this one too? Watch this space.

For more details:

http://www.cbi.org.uk/media-centre/press-releases/2012/11/government-procurement-still-a-painful-process-for-business/

Import development for all our construction industry colleagues!

jc@euro-bidwatch.com (John Chudleigh) — Sun, 04 Nov 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Scape open applications for £1bn National Major Works Framework

Local authority controlled company Scape www.scapebuild.co.uk has issued a tender for their £1bn National Major Works Framework

“With existing arrangements nearing total project value capacity, Scape has invited expressions of interest from contractors for the delivery of tightly budgeted and time controlled projects on behalf of public sector organisations.”
For details see www.localgov.co.uk

Top Tips for Contracting with Charities for Public Services

jc@euro-bidwatch.com (John Chudleigh) — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 00:00:00 GMT

At a meeting yesterday with a Social Enterprise, one director mentioned that ‘we are OJEU exempt’ – Boy! Is THAT a can of worms.
Whilst investigating, I came across this list from law firm, Dundas Wilson. Written back in April 2011 in the wake of Cameron’s The Big Society’ drive it shows how the treatment of charities under the procurement regulations varies and how to avoid the pitfalls:
Dundas Wilson top tips for charities

Public consultation in B2G EU e-invoicing

jc@euro-bidwatch.com (John Chudleigh) — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Got any burning issues relating to B2G (Business to Government) e-invoicing which you’re eager to get off your chest?

Well now’s your chance! To help take us all to the broad sunlit uplands of pan-European e-invoicing interoperability, currently accounting for only 5%-15% of all transactions, the European Commission invite Public authorities, citizens and enterprises to contribute their ideas through a public consultation.
The objective is to raise awareness and therefore promote the uptake of invoices generated via EDI, XML or web-based forms which can be automatically integrated into buyers’ Accounts Payable systems.

It is hoped, because Public Authorities are the largest purchasers in the EU that they’ll be the driving force for the broader uptake of B2B (Business to Business) e-invoicing. This might be wishful thinking given the Euro hiatus and general sclerosis towards agents for change in the EU.
However, the administrative savings promised may be the driver in pushing this forward from the top, so hopefully facilitating a downward spiral in purchasing cycle costs and therefore in its own small way, helping to ease the burden on European public debts.

Still interested? Then go to: http://ec.europa.eu/yourvoice/ipm/forms/dispatch?form=einvoicingpubproc&lang=en
It will remain open until the 14th January 2013.

Where in the world is it easiest to do business?

jc@euro-bidwatch.com (John Chudleigh) — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMT

New Europe Online Business (October 23 2012)

EU – Good for Business? Depends which bit!

Romulus is fascinated (the twin should go out more) by this latest tome from The World Bank, in conjunction with the International Finance Corporation (IFC). Not great reading for those wishing to do serious business in the ‘Eurozone’ with only the UK and Denmark making the Top Ten. Click here for a copy of the report .

http://www.doingbusiness.org

Solutions – Are You Selling What They’re Buying?

jc@euro-bidwatch.com (John Chudleigh) — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Is there a solution you can supply and support?• Can it be matched within your companies’ current portfolio?

So how do you to identify potential EU buyers? Let’s explore how you can ‘dig up’ areas which fit your offering, and ensure that you achieve the sale.

Here’s an interesting European figure; feral child and fratricidal founder of the first European state, he seems to command a place in our collective imagination. Step forward Romulus.

Many of us will be content to let him remain there, tucked away as another childhood memory; like most foundation myths – culturally instructive but of doubtful historicity. No problem and (therefore) no solution.

Dr. Andrea Carandini thinks differently. A septuagenarian Italian archaeologist and aristocrat, his Romulus is a historical figure and actual founder of Rome. To argue his case, Dr. Carandini (rather tenuously) attempts to match recent discoveries in Rome to a very real eponymous man; a wall here, a palace there.

Rather than being content with a latent piece of information, Dr. Carandini sees an ancient wall in Rome as a solution waiting to happen, he then impatiently searches backwards for a problem to be solved, and duly finds our friend Romulus.

Searching for Problems to Solve.

To suggest that the problem of Romulus’ historicity can be solved by a few contemporaneous finds is in my view off the mark. The truth is that Dr. Carandini’s peers don’t like his thesis because it takes a large shortcut. In winning business, we like shortcuts. We should take our cue from the rogue archaeologist.

Agonistic archaeologists aren’t the only ones who need to work backwards. While Dr. Carandini’s ideas attract scepticism because of this methodology, the idea of finding problems that your products and service can solve is the smart route to success in EU procurement. So how do we best match our solutions (products and services) to European problems (tenders)?

Working Backwards

Rather than enduring the expense of changing your product or service, finding existing problems (EU tenders) which match your existing solutions is the more economic modi operandi . To revert to the over-excavated archaeological analogy, these problems lie right under our feet, waiting for us to use the right tool to dig them up.

Digging for EU Gold

While matching your solution to a greater number of relevant problems is the first and most happy outcome of using tender experts. We will often find that, according to our business instincts, our solutions do indeed need to change according to demand.

But change how? Well, no matter how much we think we know our market, we could all know it that little bit better. Again, information on who’s buying what, when they’re doing it and where they are is under your feet – literally at your fingertips. Information of this kind is invaluable when the time to alter our products or services comes.

Romulus’ existence may never be proved either way, archaeologists will dig on, hoping that the problem can be resolved. For European procurement the future is much less bleak; in attempting to unearth our own Romuli, with our intelligent, pinpoint accuracy – keep digging and you will find EU gold.

Help! Where’s the good news in Europe?

jc@euro-bidwatch.com (John Chudleigh) — Tue, 29 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Tired of the media’s daily output of economic gloom with the light at the end of the tunnel ebbing further away? Courage! As they might say en français – please read on.

First, let’s look at the basic facts. We’re told the EU represents conservatively about 40% of the UK’s trade and that the EU’s public spending constitutes nearly 20% of its GDP. Somewhere in there is a hidden figure showing not only how much of that 40% is made up of public spending exports but also the potential to further develop this market.

If you’re tuned into the ticker tape despondency that the news media dish up every second of every minute, you would think this is the last place to find any glimmer of hope given that not only does Europe seem a busted flush but also that the austerity school is still in the ascendency, driving for huge cuts in public spending in many countries. This however is only part of the story in Europe’s complex and disparate economic landscape with tantalising areas of growth in some countries.

These countries represent not only half of the OJEU’s tender volume but also 44% of its GDP, counterbalancing the shrinkage elsewhere in the previous quarter.

With the exception of Greece, many countries showed positive signs of growth, i.e. not unsustainable public tendering growth with tailspin GDP contraction, but underpinned with GDP growth too.

The Hellenics seemingly spat out their bitter medicine whilst Matron Merkel’s back was turned, counter-intuitively defying the laws of Economics (not Politics!) by increasing the volume (value unknown) of tenders published in the last quarter compared with the same period last year by a staggering 41%. By comparison, the European average was 2% and for the UK -13%, yes minus 13% (see graph below). Using an appropriate Greek word, it is a heroic achievement by anyone’s standards.

So now for the potentially good news… (Cue Alan Freeman Hit Parade theme music!)

Northern Exposure

The Nordics with the exception of Iceland represent not only 9% of Europe’s GDP but also tendering activity and combined with GDP growth across the region at a conservative 1% should not be dismissed. English is commonly spoken and Norway, a member of the European Economic Area is an active participant in OJEU tendering with output comparable to the Netherlands. Uniquely in Europe and probably the world, their public savings exceed their public debts by 160% according to the IMF (i.e. they have lots of money!), and they publish all their tenders in English. One of the ironies of not being in the EU but the EEA is that Norwegian isn’t an official EU language and English is their default tendering language.

New Europe

It’s the EU’s relative neophytes who, using Donald Rumsfeld’s (remember him?) post 9/11 emotive polemics are outpacing ‘old Europe’. Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and even in the wild east Bulgaria and Romania. Collectively they may only represent 7% of Europe’s GDP, but they are all growing economies (Latvia & Estonia 3% & Romania Bulgaria & the Czech Republic 2%).

The increase in tendering activity between these two Q1 periods was high in Estonia 32% and Bulgaria 38% but most notable were the Czech Republic and Slovakia where growth doubled (see chart) compared with the same quarter in 2011 and supported with GDP growth.

At the moment these are only tasters with maybe some statistical aberrations, but they cannot all be dismissed and for the discerning bidder, looking beyond these shores, need to be taken note of. We will return to this area in future blogs.

The EU institutions (e.g. the Commission, European Development Fund etc.) are included in the comparison chart below separately because with its own budgets, they accounted for 1.4% of all OJEU procurement activity last year, higher than 12 of the studied countries.