Facilitate Negotiation Process
Officers facilitate six steps in this stage:
- Finalise Invitation to Negotiate (ITN)
- Issue ITNs
- Responses to ITN
- Select by quality criteria
- Verify evidence at bidders’ premises
- Negotiate
Guidance on preparing the ITN is given under INVITATION TO NEGOTIATE.
Invitation to Negotiate
The Invitation to Negotiate should ask questions about:
- quality issues in greater depth than the PQQ
- commercial issues based on project types.
“Invitation to Negotiate” continued…
Select by quality criteria
Similar to “Assess PQQs”.
Select by quality criteria follows a process similar to that already developed and tested under ASSESS PQQs.
Example
Here is an example Evaluation Workbook prepared by MCC: “Building better standards – invitation to negotiate evaluation workbook“. It has seven sections:
- Overall summary schore sheet
- Written proposals
- Interviews and presentations
- Overall consistency
- Reality check factor
- Financial proposals.
Responses to ITN
This is directed at bidders:
- Understanding the ‘values’ behind the questions
- Maximising your chances of success.
Presentation
Opening dialogue between clients and bidders:
- Bidders give presentations showing how they would approach the framework process and specifically how they would deliver one of the project types
- Client verifies whether claims made in the ITN submissions are backed by evidence at the bidders’ premises
- Both gain a better understanding of the other’s position
Negotiation
Continuing dialogue to agree framework terms
It is normal to find that the bids are unacceptable because:
they do not fully meet the client’s requirements, and/or
the competing bids are on different bases.
The objective is to select the number of suppliers required for the framework by ensuring both these criteria are satisfied.
This will involve asking for revised submissions and face-to-face negotiations to reconcile any differences in the positions of the parties.
