Evaluation of your Further Competition
The evaluation of the Quality and Service element and the Pricing element must be conducted in accordance with what you have specified in your Invitation to Further Competition document.
Intention to Award
Feedback to Successful and Unsuccessful Bidders
Once you have decided which supplier you want to award the contract to, you should make sure you get approval to award in line with your organisation’s governance process. You also need to notify both the successful and unsuccessful Providers.
A winning bidder will usually be given feedback on its own scores only while the losing bidders should be given reasons for the decision and the characteristics and relative advantages of the winning tender. However, you must ensure that a losing bidder does not obtain a competitive advantage by way of feedback. In practice, this means you should provide:
- The overall scores for the winning and losing bidders.
- A short rationale for each of the losing bidder’s scores
- An explanation in relation to each of the winning bidder’s scores of the reasons for the score and, where applicable, it scored higher than the losing bidder.
Ensure that confidential and sensitive commercial information is not disclosed. In particular, ensure confidential technical information and pricing information is not provided in feedback.
The Example Intention to Award and Contract Award Letters provide templates for you to use when advising both successful and unsuccessful Providers of the outcome.
Holding a Standstill Period
Once you have completed your evaluation, it is recommended that you hold a standstill period, although this is not mandatory. If you elect to hold a standstill period, then you need to issue Intention to Award letters and provide feedback to Providers. Standstill starts the day after you send out your notification and is for a minimum of ten days.
Contract Award
Once the standstill period has been completed, you will need to issue a Contract Award letter along with the final version of your Order Form and Call-off Terms and Conditions to the winning Provider. This will form the contract between your organisation and the successful Provider.
The winning Provider should acknowledge receipt of the Contract Award, and the Order Form should be signed by both parties in accordance with your organisation's requirements.
Publish your Contract Award via Contracts Finder
You will need to publish a Contract Award Notice for any contracts you let via the National LGPS Frameworks if their value is over £30,000.
Contract Award Notices should be posted within 90 days from the date the contract was signed by the final party. You can do this via Contracts Finder. Contracts Finder is free to use and is accessible here: www.gov.uk/contracts-finder. Your procurement team should be able to assist you with this.
These requirements differ for Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Please speak to your procurement or legal team to understand the requirements for these areas