Special features of public procurement
Date
January, 2025
Reading time
7 minutes
Category
Best practice
Peggy Herman
Co-founder and Managing Director of Bee4win, where she oversees the company’s consulting and pre-sales service activities. Since 2002, she has managed numerous public and private tenders, ranging from a few tens of thousands to several hundred million euros, in sectors as varied as IT, energy, industry and events.
An expert in pre-sales, Peggy continues to provide bid management and writing services, coaching and training. She has also been conducting studies on best practices in this field for over 10 years. Committed to the development of the pre-sales profession, she is president of the French-speaking chapter of APMP and a frequent speaker at events including the Bid and Proposal Conference Europe and Bee4win’s customers.
Key words
#Publicprocurement
#Advertisingthresholds
#DCE
Public procurement contracts are contracts concluded between public purchasers and economic operators to meet the need for work, supplies or services. These contracts must respect three fundamental principles: freedom of access, equal treatment and transparency. In this article, we take a closer look at these three principles, which guarantee a fair and equitable procedure.
Freedom of access: a fundamental principle
Advertising and competitive bidding
The principle of open access is one of the cornerstones of public procurement. It is based on the public purchaser’s obligation to make its purchasing requirements accessible to all companies likely to respond, and to encourage the widest possible competition. To achieve this, adequate advertising must be issued in accordance with the conditions laid down by the regulations, enabling potential candidates to find out about business opportunities. This advertising generally takes the form of legal announcements (public procurement notices) published in various media, such as specialized newspapers or online platforms.
Advertising media
Advertising media vary according to the size of the contract and the entity concerned. Among the main sources are the Bulletin Officiel des Annonces de Marchés Publics (BOAMP), the Journal Officiel de l’Union Européenne (OJEU), and various public procurement dematerialization platforms, such as PLACE, Megalis and Maximilien. In addition, online portals, both free and fee-based, such as marchesonline.com, francemarché.com, centraledesmarches.com and Qualify, list advertising and consultation notices from a wide range of sources. These sources facilitate access to market notices and their early detection.
Contract notices
Compliance with the rules on advertising and competitive tendering ensures free and fair access for all economic players. The public purchaser must therefore ensure that information on its requirements is correctly disseminated.
Invitations to tender are formalized by the publication of a Notice of Public Invitation to Tender (AAPC), which informs interested companies of the characteristics of the contract and the procedure to be followed. The notice generally includes crucial information such as the subject of the contract, the public entity concerned and its sector of activity, the type of procedure, the date of publication of the consultation file, the information enabling it to be retrieved, the deadline for submission of responses, sometimes the estimated amount and the selection criteria for bids.
In some cases, a pre-information notice or a periodic indicative notice may be published to announce the intention to award a contract, before it is officially published.
Advertising and procedure thresholds
Advertising thresholds determine the level of advertising and competitive tendering required. These thresholds depend on the estimated value of the contract, its purpose and the organization concerned.
The regulations also define thresholds for public procurement procedures, which depend on the subject matter (works, supplies or services) and the estimated value of the contract:
- Less than €40,000: There is no obligation to put the contract out to tender. The purchaser can simply ask for quotes without any particular formalities.
- Between €40,000 and the formalized procedure threshold: The organization can use an adapted procedure (MAPA), offering flexibility in the organization of the contract.
Above this threshold: A formalized procedure must be followed, such as an open or restricted procedure, guaranteeing increased competition.
These thresholds are updated regularly. To find out which thresholds apply at any given time, please consult the following pages on the entreprendre.service-public.fr website:
Equal treatment: An impartial process
Respect for the principles of equality
Equal treatment of bidders is essential in public procurement. All bidders must have access to the same information. This principle imposes a series of rules to be respected when drawing up and evaluating bids.
- The specifications, or Dossier de Consultation des Entreprises (DCE), must be objective and must not influence the choice of supplier.
- Answers to questions asked by candidates must be made available to all candidates.
- Deadlines for receipt of bids must be announced and scrupulously observed to enable all candidates to submit their proposals under fair conditions.
The Enterprise Consultation Folder (ECF)
The ECF groups together all the documents made available to candidates by the purchaser to respond to a call for tenders. These documents can be downloaded directly from an online platform or obtained from the purchaser. The ECF generally includes the following documents
- The Rules of Consultation (RC): These define the specific rules of the contract, i.e. the criteria for selecting and evaluating bids.
- Specific Administrative Clauses: This contains the legal conditions governing the performance of the contract.
- Specific Technical Specifications: This document details the specific needs to be met by the winning supplier. It is generally referred to as the “technical specifications”.
- The Unit Price Schedule (BPU) and/or the Breakdown of the Total and Fixed Price (DPGF) and/or the Quantitative and Estimative Detail (DQE): These are the documents to be completed to fill in the financial offer, according to a format and breakdown imposed by the purchaser.
- Commitment Deed: this is the contractual document to be completed and signed by the candidate, in which he undertakes to comply with the clauses of the specifications and to respect the proposed price.
In addition to these documents, the ECF may also documents relating to the procedure, such as application forms (DC1, DC2, etc.), or any other document describing the existing solution, detailed specifications of the need or additional requirements to be met.
Documents to be submitted by candidates
In public procurement, documents are separated into two parts: the bid and the offer.
To apply for a contract, companies are generally required to supply administrative forms (DUME or DC1, DC2 and DC4 in the case of subcontracting), a list of references, a statement of turnover and workforce, as well as information on hardware and software resources and certificates of professional qualifications, accompanied by a K-bis extract.
For the offer, the documents to be submitted are typically :
- The technical brief describes the need, the company or group of companies responding, the proposed solution and implementation approach , and any appendices such as references and CVs. It should be noted that this technical brief sometimes has to comply with a more or less strict framework imposed by the customer: this framework may, for example, concern the structure of the document, the number of pages, the styles to be respected, etc.
- The financial offer, respecting the required format (BPU, DQE, DPGF)
- The completed contract form, accompanied by a bank details form (RIB).
Transparency: Visibility of selection criteria
Communication of selection criteria
Transparency is at the heart of the public procurement process. In order to avoid any discrimination or bias, selection criteria must be clearly defined from the outset and set out in the consultation regulations. This includes not only financial criteria, but also those for assessing the technical quality of bids. The latter may include elements such as the relevance of the technical solution, the proposed methodology, the company’s experience, the proposed CVs, ….
It is also increasingly common to see criteria relating to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) commitments, such as ecological practices or the social policy of candidate companies.
Challenges for the public purchaser
The public purchaser must choose the offer that provides the best value at the best price, according to the criteria set out in the consultation regulations. It must also ensure that candidates are capable of carrying out the contract, and in particular assess their financial soundness, reliability and experience.
The result of the bid evaluation
Once the contract has been awarded, candidates who have submitted a bid may ask the purchaser to send them a summary of the evaluation of their bid: this summary usually includes, for each evaluation criterion and sub-criterion, the score obtained by the candidate concerned and by the candidate(s) to whom the contract has been awarded, and the arguments justifying these scores.
The transparency of the procedure thus strengthens trust between the parties, while guaranteeing a competitive environment conducive to innovation and the quality of the services provided.
Conclusion
Public procurement is governed by essential principles that ensure transparency, fairness and competitiveness in the selection of bids. Freedom of access ensures that all companies have the opportunity to participate in invitations to tender, thanks to adequate advertising and competitive bidding within defined thresholds. Equality of treatment ensures that all candidates are treated impartially, with objective criteria and strict adherence to deadlines. Last but not least, transparency of selection criteria reinforces trust and enables clear evaluation of bids, whether financial or technical.
Many terms specific to public procurement are used and can be frightening if you don’t understand them. Rest assured, this specific vocabulary is fairly quick to grasp once you’ve taken a closer look, and once you’ve mastered it, bidding for a public contract often turns out to be less complicated (but not necessarily less time-consuming) than you thought.
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