Contract Award

Once the successful supplier has been identified and approval has been received to award the contract, you can notify suppliers of the outcome.

The successful supplier should be notified of the outcome in writing, using the Contract Award Letter. This must be signed by a person with the delegated authority to procure and commit your Organisation to the contract. The letter may be adapted as required.

At the same time as the above, unsuccessful suppliers should be notified using the Unsuccessful Quotation Letter.

A supplier is entitled to ask for the reasons why their quotation was unsuccessful. It is essential that all feedback is documented for audit purposes and based on the objective criteria used to evaluate the quotation. This is called de-briefing and provides suppliers with positive constructive feedback to help improve their performance in future quotations. It can also provide an opportunity for suppliers to suggest improvements to your procurement processes.

Once these letters have been issued to the successful supplier, the quotation becomes live and can now be referred to as a contract.

Retention of Documentation

All documentation relating to your quotation process must be kept in line with your Organisation's governance arrangements. This will make sure you have a full audit trail of the quotation activities.

If you are using the Public Contracts Scotland (PCS) Quick Quote facility, a full audit trail will have been automatically maintained by this system. PCS will hold this information for one year. If you need to keep information longer than one year you must save it before it is deleted from PCS.

Any information you keep must be held in line with the current Data Protection Regulation (DPR) requirements.

Checklist

Have you Got Everything You Need?

Before carrying on, please check you've got everything you need:

issued a formal Award letter
issued unsuccessful letter(s)
remember to raise a Purchase Order with the successful supplier
a suitable area (either electronic or physical) for storing relevant documentation
access to the data is given to all individuals with authority

Route 1

Retention of Documentation

Have you Got Everything You Need?

Any documents you need are listed below

Contract Award Letter

Unsuccessful Quotation Letter