In short, a tender is what a business or institution offers. That is to say, a contract which the ordering party invites other businesses to bid on.
Tendering is a central process in the construction industry, where a builder invites contractors and suppliers to bid on a construction project. A builder is a public authority, business, or private person that needs to have construction work done. The process ensures that the builder gets the best price and quality for the intended work, while the contractors gets the opportunity to win new tasks. Licitationen has in connection with this worked up a project and tendering platfom, Projektagenten, to make it easier to find new cooperations and customers.
When a builder wants to carry out a construction project, firstly, the tendering material is drawn up. This material describes the project’s extent, technical requirements. timelines, and other relevant details. After this, the contractors are invited to submit their offer based on this material.
There are different types of tendering and each one has their own rules and procedures.
Public tendering is a process where a public authority such as a municipality, region, or governmental institution announces a construction project and invites private businesses to bid on it. This ensures that the work is carried out in an economically responsible way and, at the same time, the competition between the suppliers is promoted. Public tenders is subject to legislation and rules, including The European Union’s tendering rules. This is to ensure an open, transparent, and non-discriminating process. This also helps to ensure a fair competition and the best usage of public funds.
Limited tendering is a type of tender, where a public authority invites a limited number of chosen suppliers to submit an offer on a task. This is instead of opening the tender up for all interested parties. This form of tendering is typically used when the authority wishes to limit the number of tenderers to those they see best suited to fulfill the job.
EU tendering is a tendering process that follows rules drawn up by EU-directives applicable to all member countries. These rules require that all public contracts above a certain threshold value is made public across all member countries of the European Union in order for all businesses within the EU to be able to bid on them. The purpose of EU tendering is to promote free competition, ensure transparency, and prevent discrimination among the suppliers wihtin the EU.
Private tendering is a type of tendering where a builder or buyer invites a limited number of chosen suppliers and contractors to bid on a task or project without announcing it publicly. As opposed to public tendering where all interested parties can submit a bid, private tendering happens in a more closed circle. This type of tendering is often used in connection with smaller contracts.
A tender announcement is an official message about a public contract being available for tendering. This way, as a tenderer, you have the opportunity to assess whether or not to bid on a task in the project. The announcement ensures transparency, promotes competition, and complies with legal requirements. In the announcement, typically, there will be a long list of fundamental information about the job which is worth looking into before submitting an offer on the project.
At Projektagenten, we operate with multiple different tender phases that are defined on the grounds of the industry.
A notice in advance is an optional message which the ordering party can send to tenderers to make them aware of which upcoming tenders is intended to be carried out. It can also be used to invite businesses to a dialogue about a relevant market.
It is not legally required to send out a notice in advance, but it can give the ordering party the opportunity to shorten the normal tendering deadlines at certain tenders.
Pre-qualification refers to a process where businesses or contractors is assessed and approved to participate in a tendering. Pre-qualification serves as a prior screening. Here, the builder or the tendering authority assesses if the interested businesses has the necessary qualifications to fulfill the tasks in the project. Among other things, they look at the business’ experiences, economical strength, technical competencies, and resources.
The purpose of pre-qualification is to ensure that only the most qualified and relevant businesses gets the opportunity to bid on the job. This can be especially important in bigger or complex construction projects where the requirements to the businesses are higher. In a pre-qualification process, the interested businesses send in documentation such as references from previous projects, accounting, descriptions of technical equipment and competencies as well as any certifications they might have.
The tender phase is an important part of the tendering process in construction projects. This takes place after the pre-qualification has ended. Here, the businesses that have been pre-qualified are invited to submit their bid on the concrete construction project. At the tender phase, as a customer of Projektagenten, you are presented to all the tenders that have been published and which are ready to be bid on.
When a winner of a tender is found, the project is moved to the tendering phase ‘result’. This is where the tenders are ended since the project can now move further in the process. If you, as a user of Projektagenten, follows a tender, you can get notified when the tenders are won or ended. This ensures that you, as a business, always can keep your focus where it gives the best results.
Book a free demo of Projektagenten to see if we might also be able to help your business to better results.
