Procurement Journey
Route 1 Prepare a Brief
Route 1

Prepare a Brief

A brief is the written document that includes your requirements for your procurement exercise.

Quickfire Guide

Quickfire Guide

Your Brief

As a minimum your Brief should include:

Key Requirements
  • What do you want? 
  • Detail the timescales
  • Technical specifications
  • Statement of work
  • Budget.

Outputs

       Examples may be:

  • Temporary staff
  • Site landscaping

How bids will be evaluated

       Include your evaluation criteria and weightings.

       These should be communicated to all potential bidders.

Contract Management
  • How you are going to manage the contract when it goes live (does anything need to be added to the brief to reflect this?)
  • How will quality or service levels be measured, recorded and maintained?
  • What information should the bidder provide?
  • Costs: how do you keep them from rising?
  • How will issues be rectified?
  • Where and how are deliveries made?
  • How will processes be improved? Etc.

The Prepare a Brief document provides a template that you can populate to issue to tenderers alongside the Invitation to Quote (ITQ) letter.  It includes guidance on how to do this that can be deleted when the ITQ is ready for issue.

To prepare a brief, you should gather information to help you make decisions on what your requirements are.  This will include research on:

Suppliers
  • Do you have a current incumbent supplier?
  • What is working in this contract/what is not?
  • Are there suppliers available to quote for the work e.g. locally, regionally, nationally?

Knowledgeable People/Experts
  • Talk to people in the organisation who deal with the current contract – what do they want from a new contract?
  • Talk with other buyers who have worked on a similar project. 
  • Talk with suppliers as part of early market enagagement.

Market information
  • Have there been any changes in the market?
  • Are there any new innovations/technology?

Any decisions on what your brief will include should consider the risk and value involved.

Data Protection Regulations (DPR)

Organisations should ensure that all relevant procurement documents make reference to the Data Protection Regulations (DPR) and update their terms and conditions accordingly.

If you are in any doubt you should seek legal advice/speak to your Procurement department or your Centre of Expertise (CoE) to help finalise your brief and ensure your ITQ as well as any other documentation that you issue is DPR compliant

More information on DPR.

Checklist

Checklist

Do You Have What You Need?

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

  • Your Organisation's authority to procure before continuing

Any documents you need are listed below

Invitation to Quote Letter

(file type: doc)

Prepare a Brief

(file type: docx)

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