Tenders and Contracts

1
Tenders and Contracts

• Mairéad Lyons
• Director
• National Advisory Committee on Drugs

2
Procurement

• Public procurement procedures
• Transparency
• Equity
• Accountability
• Hence the requirement for tendering

3
Tendering

• Dept of Finance Guidelines
• Dept of CRGA Guidelines
• Procurement officer Redmond Aherne
• Thresholds
• 5,000 single tendering permissable
• Up to 25,000 3 tenders required
• Up to 50,000 5 tenders required

4
Tendering

• Above 50,000 open public competition unless
  departmental approval received
• 154,014 is EU threshold and requires that a
  contract be advertised in EU Journal
• Some exceptions where a company has unique
  access to data no-one else can access or they are
  the only company with expertise

5
Issuing Request for Tenders

• Background info to your organisation
• Give one statement of objective useful to think
  in terms of a title for the final report
• Provide a brief with more details key questions
  for investigation, target group or geographic
  area
• Provide any additional information that might
  help the bidder put together a tender that
  satisfies need

6
Issuing an RFT

• Should describe what you expect to see in the
  tender submission, methods, management etc
• Should set out criteria by which you will
  evaluate the tenders, give deadline.
• Allow sufficient time for tender submissions (3-4
  weeks) especially when asking universities (6-8
  weeks)
• Budget, FOI and conditions of contract

7
Contracts

• Should specify Terms, consideration (payment for
  product), taxes, intellectual property, who will
  own data, publication of information, data
  protection, conflict of interest, right of audit
  and termination, arbitration in event of
  disagreement.
• Issue the contract with the tender, be clear on
  what you are looking for and accountability.

8
Contract file

• Open contract file with decisions to issue RFT,
  terms and conditions of contract, the
  competition, score sheets and letter of offer
• Keep all correspondence, payments schedule and
  invoices, any variations to the agreement and
  approval of these, implementation plan and
  monitoring of progress, issues that arise and
  resolution with dates.