As part of transition to the Procurement Act 2023, the Government has refreshed and expanded its notification service, transitioning from two platforms - Contracts Finder (for below-threshold contracts) and Find a Tender (for above-threshold contracts).
A new Central Digital Platform has been created and the notifications service retains the Find a Tender Service branding. Don’t be fooled by the name remaining the same, the approach to its use is different and that difference is quite important for both buyers and suppliers in the public sector.
Suppliers
What’s new for suppliers to the wider public sector? You are being given the opportunity, indeed being required to “tell us once” for a substantial amount of the business information requested from you, each time you tender for a public sector contract or framework. You will be familiar with the Supplier Questionnaire (formerly the Pre-Qualification Questionnaire). This questionnaire was sent out with every open or restricted tender opportunity and suppliers had to complete a new questionnaire for each (and every) tender. Under the Procurement Act, the Supplier Questionnaire is now known as the Procurement Specific Questionnaire.
The new Central Digital Platform enables you to upload most of your generic business information once and amend it only when something in your business changes. You will then be able to share that information (or simply provide a link to it) when submitting your response to an open or (new) competitive flexible procedure tender.
For the limited amount of contract/framework-specific information that cannot be foreseen in advance, a smaller Procurement Specific Questionnaire will be used. Under the Act, for each above-threshold tender, you simply provide buyers with a link to your information held on this new Central Digital Platform, rather than having to repeat input it, for each tender submission.
When must I register as a Supplier? The new Central Digital Platform has opened for registration now that the Procurement Act 2023 has gone live. We recommend registering on the new Central Digital Platform as soon as practicable via www.find-tender.service.gov.uk.
You do not need to register until you need to share your uploaded information in a response to the first tender issued by a buyer that you are responding to. It may be some weeks into the new Act going live before you must register and upload the required information, or you may wish to register now, so you don’t forget to do it.
How do I register as a Supplier? We have developed a step-by-step guide to registering your company PDF to download, adding in additional colleagues from within your team who have responsibility for tendering, and importantly, generating the link code which you will then include in your tender submission, which the buying organisation can then access, to assess your company information. Some important points to think about:
The first person to register your company becomes the administrator for your company registration. That person must register with their business email address. However, once registered, you will be encouraged to provide a resource email address for future communications (such as [email protected]). This will assist your company to deal with future issues if the person making the initial registration moves on from their position and their business email becomes defunct.
Once registered and adding a further user, consider making that user a joint administrator, so you have a second point of control for your company registration.
Don’t simply register and forget. The information about your company which you upload, needs to be updated each time there is a significant change (for example, each year when your latest set of accounts is prepared). You may wish to consider reviewing the information uploaded each time you access the portal to generate an access code to include in a tender submission, just to make sure it is up to date.
Buyers
A quick note about buyers’ use and access to the new platform, as you need to understand this from a supplier’s perspective. The new Central Digital Platform represents a big change for buyers. Whilst previously buyers could register on the previous Find a Tender / Contracts Finder services to manually post notifications (such as contract notices, award notices, modification notices and the like) if using an eSender/eProcurement service such as the CPC’s MultiQuote platform, that platform did all the work for the buyer and no buyer registration was strictly necessary.
The new platform is different and all buyers in the public sector (known as Contracting Authorities) must register their institution on the new Find a Tender Service before undertaking their first notifiable procurement process under the new Act.
Why this change and additional responsibility? Simply put, it is to enable buyers to have more flexibility over how notifications about a contract are made. Under the current system, if a buyer’s contract requirement started its life as a tender on an eSender/eProcurement platform, buyers had no choice but to use that platform for all notifications connected with that contract. Under the new arrangements for the Find a Tender Service, buyers have the flexibility of using their eSender/eProcurement platform to tender and award your contract but then take control of future notifications such as contract modifications and the new contract termination notice with manual postings to the new service.
What does this mean for suppliers? In short, increased transparency of public sector spend, with additional notices required through the contract management phased and at contract termination. This should help suppliers to better understand what opportunities exist in the public sector marketplace.