Episode 55:

Hello and Welcome to the Part3 with me podcast, 

The show that helps part 3 students jump start into their careers as qualified architects and also to provide refresher episodes for practicing architects. I am your host Maria Skoutari and this week we will be talking about Public Procurement. Todays episode meets PC5 of the Part 3 Criteria.

So, What do we mean by Public Procurement:

Public procurement is in essence about public authorities buying goods, works or services from private companies and opening up the wider competition to offer tenderers an equal chance of securing contracts put out to tender. 

Public procurement in construction can play a very important role in improving the economic, social and environmental wellbeing and supporting local growth and employment through fair and transparent processes also giving the opportunity for small companies to take part and access work opportunities. 

Open public procurement can be very beneficial for a number of reasons:

The benefit of transparency, is that it requires public contracting bodies to demonstrate value for public money and projects so they are subject to external and internal audit, including compliance with organisational procedures or local authority standing orders. Before Brexit, UK practices, contractors and so on could bid for projects within the EU known as OJEU, but since the UK’s departure from the EU, the UK has launched a new platform known as Find A Tender. 

Find a Tender is a platform enabling public sector organisations across the UK to advertise their procurement needs over a specified value online. Before Brexit, Higher value notices were published on the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) but now these are advertised on Find a Tender. UK businesses though can still bid for applicable EU contracts. 

Just to give you a bit of background on this subject: 

While the UK was a member of the EU, public procurement laws came from the European Union Policy contained in the European Union Treaties and the UK could enter the open market freely and vice versa, EU countries could access public procurement opportunities in the UK and express their interest in a public project published on the OJEU website where public contracts were publish. 

But since the UK left the EU, the UK is no longer subject to EU law but still needs to comply with the World Trade Organisation rules on public procurement, meaning transparency, equal treatment and other principles of public procurement remain meaning authorities will still have to demonstrate transparency in the procedure and award of a contract.  

Interesting fact, in HKA’s 2021 Crux Report, it stated that defective design in the UK was the primary cause of claims in the publicly funded sector that’s why drive for quality needs to become more important than the focus on lowest price which means moving away from choosing the most economically advantageous tender to choosing the most advantages tender. 

Now when it comes to legislation post-Brexit, the UK now follows a series of directives which take into consideration the EU directives when it comes to public procurement, essentially meaning the UK made certain EU laws its own post Brexit, with amendments of course, these directives include: 

So looking at the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 (PCR 2015) initially, and is the one most commonly used so I will expand on it more than the other two:

These regulations, are suitable for contracts for works, suppliers and services and for design competitions. 

There are six main procurement/tendering procedures a contracting authority may adopt under PCR 2015. 


So once a process has been chosen, the preferred tender must be informed about the contract award decision as soon as possible after the decision has been made. When doing so, the contracting authority must specify:

The notice communicating the contract award decision is normally sent electronically, although “other means” are also permitted in principle. In some circumstances, the contracting authority must also notify the contract award decision to rejected applicants and bidders eliminated at earlier stages of the competition.

PCR 2015, is typically the most commonly used regulations process as it enable buyers to run procurements faster, with less red tape, and with a greater focus on getting the right supplier and best tender and that’s why I expanded on it the most. 

Now looking at the Utilities Contracts Regulations 2016 (UCR 2016):

These regulations set out rules for utilities entering into public contracts with a value above the relevant financial threshold for works, products or service. 

And lastly is the Concessions Contract Regulations 2016 (CCR 2016):

Which governs the procurement process for concession contracts by contracting authorities and utilities.

Now lets look at the public procurement process itself more closely and the process and role authorities and public sector clients have in delivering successful public procurement processes:

  1. Successful public procurement involves investing in the right design skills, briefing and design process from the outset when setting project budgets and fee levels. Architects can assist from the Strategic Definition stage in helping public sector clients to realise their needs and shaping their objectives. Public sector clients can also explore the opportunity in appointing different design teams in parallel to assist with different approaches but care must be taken to ensure that appointments won’t exceed the EU thresholds but also avoiding securing the lowest fee in case the consultant isn’t able of properly resourcing the level of services required, that’s why the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 now requests an explanation when a tender appears to be too low. 
  2. Public sector clients should consider whether and how the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 apply when commissioning design or architectural services. The Public Contracts Regulations 2015, as mentioned, apply to most design or professional services where the value is above a certain threshold and require the contract to be advertised and tendered according to the process I mentioned earlier. If the contracts are below EU thresholds, they are still required to be publicly advertised on a national web-based portal and tenders must be one stage only. The open tender process can provide greater flexibility for access from local and emerging talent. So clients will need to review their requirements and if this is the most suitable approach for their project. 
  3. Then public sector client will need to select and tailor their procurement procedure to suit their project needs and using design quality as their means for selecting candidates or awarding contracts. If the services required are above EU thresholds there are a number of variations on standard procedures allowing clients to procure design services suitable for the project. But if the services are below EU thresholds, clients can approach practices directly given their internal standing orders don’t prohibit them in doing so and that they have also published the opportunities on Contracts Finder.  
  4. So when considering whether a framework will deliver the best outcomes and design quality, contracting authorities may choose to find these services through joint purchasing arrangement and framework agreements which can typically exclude smaller practices due to their requirement for high PII and turnover. If awarding frameworks, consideration must be taken in offering more lots according to size, value, type or location of a project or nature of the services provided. Breaking contracts into lots according to the required achievement can deliver best quality and end results. If the client wishes to award the contract on design quality and not cost, it can call off the design approach from the framework of suitable consultants in a simple, sketch design mini-competition and a fixed fee call-off can be used where frameworks used have established fee rates. 
  5. But public sector clients are encouraged to offer partnership bid opportunities with smaller practices allowing them to work with larger practices or contractors to boost their profile and reputation. 
  6. So when making the selection, public sector clients are advised to use a simple and proportionate selection process according to the scale and complexity of the project. The selection criteria should typically be based on evaluating the suitability of the tendering organisation to carry out the contract and for design teams to demonstrate their ability. Clients may choose to issue a Prior Notification Notice to attract multiple tenderers and then use a Pre-Qualification Questionnaire, aka PQQ, to identify if candidates have the necessary financial, technical and economic standing to fulfil the contract. As a baseline, a PQQ should include pass or fail criteria to ensure the tenderers aren’t in breach of their professional, tax and social security obligations, beyond statutory requirements, PQQ’s can be used to request additional information enabling the client to assess the tenderer’s financial and technical competence to deliver the desired project outcome. The selection process can include asking candidates for evidence of previous experience or using PAS91 to establish candidates meet the baseline requirements, client should also check evidence of the candidate being a ‘Registered Architects’ or equivalent in other member states if procuring for architectural services, then can also check if the candidate is registered with the RIBA as evidence of quality assurance standards, and they can also use the European Single Procurement Document for candidates to provide self-declaration that their practice meets the core conditions for tendering for a contract. 
  7. Once the checks have taken place and all the relevant information has been provided, when assessing the candidates capability, public sector clients would consider their track record of undertaking projects of a similar scale and complexity. 
  8. And when setting their evaluation criteria for selection, they should set out clear criteria at both selection and award stages in advance to assist with balancing quantitative with qualitative criteria, so together with assessing candidates costs and capital, attention should also be given to their design and quality skills and clients should make decisions of a long term value for money rather than going for the lowest price. So when determining the valuation criteria, an approach that can be used is a balanced score-card to balance quantitative criteria, such as fees and cost, against qualitative criteria such as design quality at award stages - this process can be used to allow tenderers to compete on the basis of quality criteria by using a fixed price or cost approach. Now, there is a mandatory criterion that needs to be used at assessing contract awards, which is the Most Advantageous Tender aka MEAT, which I mentioned earlier in the episode. A little bit more on this approach, is that it may include the best price to quality ratio enabling clients to take account of qualitative, technical and sustainable aspects of tender submissions as well as price or cost, using a cost-effectiveness approach, such as life-cycle costing. Quality criteria can include technical merit, aesthetic and functional characteristics. 
  9. Then it would be beneficial to establish financial thresholds based on the scale, complexity, actual level of risk and value of the design services.
  10. 10.So lastly, once the most appropriate tenders has been established and the award has been granted, a standard form of building contract and consultant appointment should be chosen that promotes collaboration, integration and direct communication with the design team. 

So to sum up what I discussed today:

And to close-off, I want to leave your with some Best practice procurement: