EU Procurement Rules and Bidder Scoring

April 10th, 2006 at 05:21am Sean Delaney - Iasta UK

In a recent article in Supply Management (Page 17) David Gollancz writes about the requirement for further clarification during the supplier selection process.

The Article is well worth a read and in summary shows how the OJEC rules, in the case of Universal Bau, have been interpreted by the court of law to require the publishing of weightings in the supplier selection process.

The article quite rightly states that in many public sector procurement programs this is often more difficult to execute as bidders may be asked to “clarify, specify or fine tune” their bid. In my view when presented with such opportunities bidders are more likely to create even more questions than can actually be answered making it impossible to compare bids. The bidders may take the opportunity to be seen to be more dynamic/creative in the hope of being considered a more valuable partner. Clearly this is not ideal and a solution needs to be found.

Gollancz argues that what is required is reform and this will only happen when Industry and public authorities join forces to insist on more transparent trading. I couldn’t agree more however I feel my take on this may be slightly different than the authors!

A good eRFX suite should act as the primary interface in any sourcing activity. Online pre-qualification questionnaires (PQQ) would enable all stakeholders to score responses. All stakeholder evaluations can be weighted and therefore this creates a balanced view/scoring. Decisions regarding the publishing of scores can then be made with confidence. More complex debates can then take place, for example, should these weightings be added to bids (whether closed bid or auction)? In addition prior to bidding, suppliers will have the opportunity to raise questions online and relevant answers can be published to all. This is all truly transparent and fair.

Whilst I agree the OJEU rules are far from adequate I still fail to see why Industry and Public authorities should join forces to observe important principles. The eSourcing Industry is well on the way to creating this transparency and compliance. Market Forces have required vendors to continually reinvest in the technology to a point where there is no longer any need to create more principles.

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Entry Filed under: General, Global Supply Issues/Risk, Supplier Performance, e-RFx, e-Sourcing Marketplace