Step Two - issuing the notice and prequalifying
Issuing a PIN and/or the Notice
With the restricted OJEC procurement route you optionally publish a PIN (Prior Information Notice). This is usually only needed if it is a very complex procurement and you expect a number of suppliers will need to collaborate together to meet all the requirements of the bid. If that is the case then they need as much advance notice as possible so they can draw up outline heads of agreements and agree who will be the prime contractor and the sub contractor etc. This is unlikely to be the case with an EDRM solution unless you have a large backfile conversion requirement in which case the solution provider will need to team up with a bureau and the bureau will act as a sub contractor.
If you publish a PIN you have to wait 30 days and then you publish a Notice. If not you simply start by drafting a Notice and submitting it for publication in the journal. The Notice is a short formal notice defining the system/services you require. You can obtain all the details you need from the relevant OJEC websites and there are websites that will provide you with an electronic form to complete online and submit online. You need to register on these sites and prove you are a bona fide public sector person with procurement responsibility. Your procurement section will have their preferred route for publishing Notices.
Assuming that you have selected the restricted approach then you will also need to prepare a slightly more detailed briefing document and an Application form or Pre Qualification Questionnaire (PQQ).
The Notice will invite suppliers to express an interest in the procurement. Usually you instruct them to submit e-mails or faxes or to formally respond by post. When you receive a response you should log it and record the date when the response was received and when you sent them out the briefing document and application form/PQQ. Again you should have this in electronic format so you can simply e-mail it out to all the suppliers who respond. You may receive anything from 50 - 100 or more responses initially.
Prequalification
The application form or PQQ must be designed to achieve its prime purpose – providing you with objective criteria upon which you can decide to reject or include a supplier on your shortlist. The PQQ should ask suppliers a set of questions relating to their finances, their size, their expertise in these areas; their professional qualifications; their customer base in related areas and references of customers who have been provided with a similar system/service etc. The answers to certain key questions should be mandated. Respondees are required to submit the completed PQQ within 37 days of the date when the Notice was issued. If a supplier is late in responding then they reduce the time they have to complete the PQQ.
If you received 100 expressions of interest - some of them will just be from suppliers or consultants who are interested in what the requirement is but have no intention of replying. You may receive 40 - 70 completed PQQs depending on how long it is.
The next task is to carry out a mechanical review of the PQQs and to reject incomplete PQQs that do not comply with the mandatory requirements. This is referred to as "long listing".
The project team should then review the long listed responses and mark them and discuss them and agree a mark for each supplier and agree a cut off point of 6 - 8 shortlisted suppliers or however many you decide. These will comprise the serious short list of suppliers that you send the full ITT to. The team should agree one or more reasons why each supplier was rejected. This may be needed if any of the rejected suppliers question the basis on which they were rejected.
Your procurement team should then send out notifications to the unsuccessful suppliers.
