What Should I Tell An Unsuccessful Bidder?

A procurement challenge brought by European Dynamics earlier this year serves as a reminder of the importance of giving reasons to unsuccessful bidders when carrying out procurements subject to The Public Contracts Regulations 2015. In this case the Court upheld European Dynamics challenge that the statement of reasons given to it by the contracting authority as to why they were unsuccessful, was defective because it did not allow European Dynamics to determine, with certainty, the evaluation criteria applied and the reasons behind the scoring in parts of the tender evaluation.

When awarding contracts above the EU threshold that are subject to a mandatory standstill period, the communication sent to candidates and tenderers to notify them of the outcome must include specific information as set out by the Regulations. The Further Education Library of Procurement (FELP) contains example award notices in the Generic Tender Documentation section.

The Toolkit section of FELP includes various guides that provide further information on this subject including; A Guide to Managing Debriefing and A Guide to Managing Bidder Challenges.