Competitive Procedure with Negotiation

There are two types of “negotiated” procedures.

Under the negotiated procedure without prior publication, the authority is not required to publish a call for competition and may negotiate directly with the supplier of its choice. This applies only in very limited circumstances.

The competitive procedure with negotiation is recommended for complex procurements and only where certain conditions are met, namely, where:

• technical specifications of the works, services or supplies cannot be established with sufficient precision;
• the contracting authority’s needs cannot be met without adaptation of readily available solutions;
• the works, services or supplies include design or innovative solutions; and/or
• specific circumstances relating to the nature of the contract, complexities/legals/financials or risks attaching to them.

Under the competitive procedure with negotiation, a call for competition must be published. Contracting authorities must identify the subject-matter of the contract describing their needs, the characteristics of the supplies, works or services to be procured, and set out the contract award criteria.

They must define minimum requirements to be met by all tenders. The information must be sufficiently precise to enable prospective bidders to identify the nature and scope of the procurement and decide whether to request to participate.

Anyone may submit a request to participate, but only those successfully meeting the selection criteria will be invited to tender. Provided that in all cases there are a sufficient number of candidates to do so, a minimum of 3 bidders must be invited to tender.

The contracting authority must negotiate with bidders on the initial and all subsequent tenders submitted to improve its content, except the final tender. The authority may award a contract on the basis of the initial tender only if it has reserved the right to do so in the contract notice.

The contracting authority can, subject to certain restrictions, establish its own procedures for the negotiation. The minimum requirements and the award criteria must not be subject to negotiation.

Please find our procedure flowchart below, setting out the various stages, requirements, and timescales for the competitive procedure with negotiation.