Contract Notice 

Contract Notices must be used to advertise all Route 3 procedures. Exceptions to this include:

• use of the negotiated procedure without prior publication (only available in strictly defined and exceptional circumstances)
• a defined list of Care and Support Services contracts between £50,000 and the light touch regime theshold

The Contract Notice must contain the minimum and specific requirements for your procurement exercise.

Indicative Budget

You may choose to:

• indicate the available budget for delivering the service in question;
• specify the outcomes desired
• invite providers to submit proposals for achieving the outcomes within the resources available.

Stating an indicative budget ensures that bidders' tenders for delivering the service are affordable. This may be appropriate if, for example, a procurement exercise fails and the organisation moves to negotiation with suppliers.

Establishing a Timetable for the Procurement Process

This is particularly important if there is an expectation that suppliers will submit consortia bids to allow discussions between suppliers to take place.

With the exception of the scenarios stated in Contract Notice section above, all Contract Notices must be published on Public Contracts Scotland (PCS). 

PCS is the national advertising portal which provides suppliers with free access to contract opportunities. It guides you:

• through the process of creating a Notice on its website
• automatically creates a Notice on the Find a Tender Service

If using PCS-T or the SPD (Scotland) word document,  you must set out the specific requirements and minimum standards for your procurement.  These must be relevant and proportionate and included in your Contract Notice. This is not necessary if using the online SPD (Scotland) Module on PCS as the relevant information is contained within this module.

If Using OJEU/TED:

If your procurement was advertised before 11 p.m. on 31 December 2020 (or is a call off from a Framework Agreement or a Dynamic Purchasing System that commenced before this date) you will receive a PCS alert after you have submitted the Contract Notice for publication on PCS.  You will also receive a separate mail from Tenders Electronic Daily (TED) with your temporary OJEU reference number.

Once your Notice is published in the OJEU, TED will send you a permanent OJEU publication number.  You must retrospectively include your online SPD (Scotland) with this permanent OJEU number if using the PCS Module.

If Using FTS:

If your procurement was advertised after 11 p.m. on 31 December 2020 you will receive an FTS email after you have submitted the Contract Notice for publication on PCS. 

Your Contract Notice must contain details of how bidders can access your procurement documentation.

From the date you publish your Notice you must make your Procurement Documents available:

• on the internet;
• in unrestricted and full direct access form;
• free of charge

The Regulations define ‘procurement documents’ very widely.  This includes all documents related to the procurement i.e. including technical specifications, terms and conditions and tender documents to be used at subsequent stages

In practical terms, it is not always possible to have all documents available at the start of your procurement exercise.   Only in an Open Procedure are you required to have  the ITT available from the outset.  For all other procedures you must provide sufficiently precise information.  This will allow bidders to understand the nature and scope of your requirement and decide whether to request to participate.

PCS-T Publication

Procurement documents must not be published in PCS-T until you have received your publication reference number from FTS.

The procurement documents should be published in PCS-T on the same day of whichever of the above events occurs first.

Contract Award 

Contract Award Readiness Checklist

Before a buyer awards a contract they should check the following points:

Blank rows are provided for your use e.g. to add additional checklist items.

Using PCS

If uploading Procurement Documents to PCS file size restrictions  apply.  These are:

• 10Mb per document a maximum of 40Mb for the buyer;
• 10Mb per document with a maximum of 30Mb for the Supplier

If you are using PCS-T, attachments cannot be added to the Contract Notice on PCS. You must add your documents to PCS-T.

Using PCS-T

If you use PCS-T you must provide time limits for the receipt of tenders (bearing in mind statutory minimums).

Mixed procurements that contain any activity within the scope of the Defence and Security Regulations or the Utilities Directive  must  refer to their relevant legislation. Such procurement exercises do not come under the guidance of the Procurement Journey.

Where a procurement consists of a mix of activities:

• the main subject of the contract needs to be determined.  This will establish which procurement rules apply e.g. a procurement with a goods and a works element, which has the provision of goods as the main subject matter, should be treated as a goods procurement exercise. (It is important to focus on what the main subject is i.e. there could be a contract with more goods supplied, however, the works element may still be the main subject/purpose of the contract or vice versa.) It is important to note that in this case, the value of the relative spend is not the only factor in identifying the main subject
• partly services (including Care and Support Services and those detailed in Schedule 3, and partly goods: the main subject of the contract is determined by which of the services or goods has the highest estimated value
• Care and Support Services and those listed in Schedule 3 and partly for other services: the main subject of the contract is determined by which of the services has the highest estimated value.