Procurement portal

Yes.

Suppliers are required to register their intention to submit a proposal and must register on the portal.

Registering ensures potential suppliers are kept informed of any issues of clarification to the procurement documentation that may need to be made subsequent to its issue.

It is a one-off activity and, once accepted, suppliers will receive a username and password to use for all future access, regardless of any particular contract.

We recommend that you register with a generic mailbox so that information from the system can be sent to more than one representative at the company.

Once a supplier has their username and password are received, they should log in and register their interest in a specific contract.

Suppliers will only be rejected where the registration is a duplicate. 

Suppliers must download the procurement documents to their local system, fill in the documents, and then upload back to the system (it is not possible to fill in the documents online).

Tender boxes will be locked at 12:00 and any documents that are part way through being uploaded will be rejected. For this reason we recommend uploading your documents in good time.

No.

Faxed copies of responses are not acceptable. Suppliers must upload their documents into the portal (as described above).

No.

It is not possible for tenders submitted after the deadline to be considered.

This varies depending on the complexity of the solution being procured.

A procurement timetable will be detailed within the ITT document. Any unsuccessful suppliers will be informed by the dates given.

Yes.

Our letter will include:

• Evaluation criteria
• Name of the preferred supplier
• Scores of the preferred supplier against the award criteria and the score of the supplier

If this information is not sufficient suppliers responding to an invitation to tender can request a debrief.

Arrangements will differ depending on the nature of the procurement, the process for which is detailed within the procurement documentation.

Suppliers will be provided with clarification of requirements in accordance with the EU directives on procurement.

Where issues of clarification arise each registrant will be notified via the portal.

No.

In all procurements the objective is to secure the most economically advantageous contract. Price will have a bearing on any decision, but this is conjunction with other criteria such as the ability to meet mandatory requirements, quality, service, delivery and whole life costs. Evaluation criteria for each individual procurement is published within the ITT documentation.

All responses are evaluated against the published criteria.

This depends on the nature of the procurement.

The ITT documentation clearly states whether or not supplier standard terms and conditions are acceptable.

For the majority of procurement, we expect our own standard terms and conditions to be adhered to. In these instances an example of our standard agreement relative to the service being provided will be included with the ITT documentation.

On occasion a supplier’s own terms and conditions would be acceptable.

This is clearly indicated within the ITT documentation.

Normally Jisc would require that a tender be valid for six months after the tender submission date.

This will be clearly stated within the ITT document.

It is normal practice for us to ask a supplier to provide evidence of their financial and economic standing and their technical capability and experience. In some procurements suppliers are asked to provide site references.

We don't generally hold open supplier meetings but prefers to discuss issues relating to the procurement with individual suppliers, in confidence.

Any matters of clarification that may arise from such meetings will be anonymised before being communicated to all registered suppliers.