Submitting a tender

Take care to enter all the relevant information so that your tender matches what is requested in the procurement in question. The tender documents consist of the following parts:

• Administrative T&C (SV)
• Supplier requirements (SV)
• Procurement item requirements (SV)
• Grounds for the assessment (SV)
• Terms of contract (SV)
• Contract follow-up (SV)

Submit correct and complete information from the start. The procuring organisation has no obligation to allow any form of clarification or additional information on your part. Thus, there are limited opportunities for suppliers to supplement their tender after the tender closing date. Unfortunately, incomplete tenders are common and the consequence is that those tenders are rejected.

It is also important for suppliers to carefully check that all the requirements in the tender documents are clear.

If the tender is ambiguously worded, it may result in it being incorrectly assessed. The procuring organisation will only consider aspects that are expressly outlined in the tender and nothing else. Please ensure that the procuring organisation has set proportional requirements aimed at fulfilling the purpose of the procurement. Also ensure that the requirements are unambiguously worded, so that you understand what you, as a supplier, are expected to deliver throughout the contract term.

Take the time to check that you have responded to everything and complied with the administrative instructions before submitting your tender. Aim to write a clear tender that is easy to understand. Do not assume that the procuring organisation is familiar with all the abbreviations and terms, unless they are well-established within the industry in question.

Follow the structure in the tender documents to avoid submitting an incomplete tender. Use any necessary tender forms. If you respond in a separate document, make sure that you denote which question is being answered.

The procuring organisation will examine and assess several tenders from different tenderers. It may be time-consuming to review an ambiguous tender.

When the principle of public access is a factor, the rules regarding confidentiality become relevant. The rules are not evident from the procurement legislation, but from the Public Access to Information and Secrecy Act. This law only applies to the procuring organisations that fall under the term “authorities” in accordance with the aforementioned law. Thus, there are procuring organisations, the purchases of which are subject to the procurement legislation, but not to the principle of public access and the rules on confidentiality.

In public procurement, there are various rules in place governing the release of documents for procuring organisations that are subject to this principle, as well as for procuring organisations not subject to the principle.

As a rule, complete confidentiality applies until the procuring organisation has made a decision to award the contract to a supplier or to cancel the procurement. This means that during the procurement, the procuring organisation is prohibited from disclosing any information about the tenders to any party besides the party that submitted the information.

As a rule, when the award decision has been made, all documents in the procurement, such as tenders, records and award decisions pertaining to the procurement, will be made public. Only in certain situations, outlined in the Public Access to Information and Secrecy Act, is the procuring organisation permitted to continue to keep the information classified.

Two examples of classified information:

• Information about operating conditions or business relationships at a supplier that has entered into a business relationship with an authority is subject to confidentiality, if it is believed that the supplier can suffer damage should the information be disclosed.
• If the public may suffer damage should the information be disclosed.

In the tender, you can describe which information you think should be classified, in order to facilitate the procuring organisation’s confidentiality review. That notwithstanding, the authority conducts an independent review in each individual case.

Tenders that are submitted too late cannot be examined by the procuring organisation. It is your responsibility as a tenderer to ensure that the tender is submitted by the tender closing date.  

A procuring organisation and a supplier shall communicate with one another electronically during a procurement. It is a requirement that tenders are submitted electronically, provided it does not involve certain exceptional situations.

For example, it is possible to forego the requirement if it is a matter of submission of product samples, which for obvious reasons cannot be submitted electronically.

If the procuring organisation requires that tender applications or tenders shall be submitted electronically, and a tenderer submits it in another format despite this, the authority cannot consider the document.