Market engagement

A Delegated Purchasing Officer (DPO) or procurement specialist will engage with the market on your behalf to gather offers from suppliers for digital products or services that meet your procurement requirements.

Early engagement

Your DPO or procurement specialist may look at engaging early with the market, before formally requesting that offers be made. Early engagement gives an opportunity for potential suppliers to learn what you want to buy so they can prepare in advance of the formal request for offers, known as an Invitation to Tender (ITT).

This early engagement may also help you understand how much a purchase may cost, which you can use to inform your business case and governance approval processes.

In going to market, your DPO or procurement specialist will look at:

innovation-focused routes - within the Scottish Government, CivTech provides a potential route to market where no known market solution exists
other options, such as negotiation, direct award, frameworks or competitions, where appropriate - you can find out more about procurement procedures within the Scottish public sector at Procurement Journey

Use of Scottish Government procurement frameworks to procure what you need

Frameworks are a method for procuring common products and services that may be quicker than other methods.

Frameworks can also lead to a reduction in bid costs and effort on behalf of suppliers, as lots of information is requested and tested at framework award level, rather than at the level of a single bid.

Your DPO or procurement specialist will help you look at whether a ‘borrow’ or ‘outsource’ delivery model can be used – this means looking at current frameworks to see whether existing contracts and contracting mechanisms can be used to procure what you need.

When looking at existing frameworks, your DPO or procurement specialist will look into account a number of factors to evaluate which framework is most appropriate for your project or programme, including the framework’s:

impact on your procurement and project timetable
assurance criteria for suppliers, and whether these are sufficient for the needs of your project
market health and capacity, including range of suppliers
suitability of contract terms

You must use frameworks appropriately, and only procure products and services that are within the scope of any of the framework’s particular agreements.

Framework managers within the Scottish Procurement and Property Directorate (SPPD) and your DPO or procurement specialist will provide decision-making support.

If your DPO or procurement specialist recommends using a framework, you should read all the framework’s documents before going ahead with the framework as your procurement approach. You should also check with the framework provider that it meets their requirements, provides the necessary, relevant and proportionate protections and is suitable for the criticality and value of your product or service. Keeping up to date procurement pipelines will avoid the time pressures that can lead to inappropriate framework selection.

A successful framework contract should be based around principles that align objectives, success measures, targets and incentives so as to enable joint work on improving value and reducing risk. This should then be combined with transparent and meaningful performance measurement and work allocation procedures.

You can view a list of frameworks currently used by the Scottish Government, available for use by central government and the wider public sector, on gov.scot.

A dynamic purchasing system (DPS) is a two stage procurement process, where suppliers submit an application to join and are evaluated against minimum selection criteria prior to being accepted to the DPS. The second stage uses a mini-competition process for specific procurement requests.

Suppliers can apply to join a DPS at any point during its lifetime. This makes it an ideal route to market for buyers procuring specialist digital services and allowing relatively new suppliers access to public sector contracts. Suppliers who do not meet the selection criteria can reapply to join at any point.

Dynamic purchasing systems must be run as a completely electronic process, as laid out under Regulation 35 of the Public (Contracts) Scotland Regulations 2015.

A dynamic purchasing system follows a similar procurement process to that of a framework agreement. However a DPS offers some flexibility in the application process. Suppliers are able to join or leave the dynamic purchasing system at any time.

The digital technology and cyber services DPS is split into four lots:

lot 1 – digital technology projects and services
lot 2 – digital technology resources
lot 3 – digital training services
lot 4 – cyber security services

Additional DPS exist for telephony and communication services and the internet of things.

The Crown Commercial Service (CCS) offers a number of framework options through which digital products and services can be procured. CCS frameworks offer:

a full set of standard contract schedules and terms & condition
the opportunity to significantly reduce the amount of time needed to finalise contracts post-competition – as full sets of standard contract schedules and terms & conditions are available through CCS frameworks, publishing a contract tailored to your particular project as part of the tender process is much quicker

Examples of CCS frameworks include G Cloud and the CCS contact registry.

Publishing contracts on PCS

For open procurements (procurements not conducted through a framework or Dynamic purchasing system) your DPO should advertise all regulated procurements (£50,000 or more for goods and services, £2 million or more for works contracts) on Public Contracts Scotland (PCS). For transparency, it is best practice to publish a contract notice for all contracts on PCS, regardless of value. The award of a contract or the conclusion of a framework agreement must also be published on PCS. Exemptions to these publication requirements apply in certain circumstances. For more information see regulation 33 and 51(6) of The Public Contracts (Scotland) Regulations 2015 and regulation 7(8) of The Procurement (Scotland) Regulations 2016. For Research & Development services (e.g. procurements for innovative services) Pre-Commercial Procurement notices and Award notices should be published.

If you work for the Scottish Government, you should start your procurement process by contacting your directorate's DPO.

If you do not have a DPO, or you work for an agency of the Scottish Government or another organisation under the Technology Assurance Framework, check who you need to contact.

Starting your procurement with your DPO or a procurement specialist

When contacting your DPO or procurement specialist, you should be able to explain your procurement requirements. For very basic, low value procurements, you will not need to give extensive details, but for everything else you should be able to explain:

the needs of your users - you should have a good sense of your users' requirements from the discovery phase of your project and from carrying out user research
what advice you've had from subject matter and technical experts that have helped you form your requirements - if you work for the Scottish Government, you should fill in a questionnaire that will help put you in contact with some of the people who can provide the specialist technical advice you'll need

At this point of the process, you should only be thinking of your procurement in terms of requirements - what needs must be met - rather than in terms of buying a specific product or service.

If you work within the Scottish Government, an Accountable Officer Form will also need to be completed before any procurement can take place.

Your DPO or procurement specialist will help you decide the best way to procure what you need.

The best route to procuring what you need depends on a number of factors including cost and how common your requirements are. Things your DPO or procurement specialist will look at are whether:

for a common, low value procurement within the Scottish Government, an ePC can be used to quickly buy something to meet your requirements
a Scottish Government reusable component, such as ScotPayments, ScotAccount or the Cloud platform can be used - if possible, reusing existing Scottish Government components will save your service time and money

If reuse is not suitable, it's likely your DPO or procurement specialist will need to go to the external market with your requirements to buy what you need. It's important to note that you do not need to do anything to start the process of going to market - it's the responsbility of your DPO or procurement specialist to oversee this process - though they may need to involve you in some aspects of market engagement, such as speaking to suppliers to explain your requirements.

Your DPO or procurement specialist will also let you know if supporting documents, like a specification document, need to be produced as part of this process.

Find out more about the options when going to market, including procurement frameworks and dynamic purchasing systems.

You'll need to evaluate offers from suppliers with your DPO or procurement specialist.

During this process, your DPO or procurement specialist will undertake a commercial evaluation of offers and you will need to undertake a technical evaluation to check which offer best meets your requirements.

You should set up a Tender Evaluation Panel within your team to conduct your technical evaluation. This panel should involve senior leads on your project, such as Service or Product Owners, and include appropriate digital expertise.

You'll need to make sure that what the panel decides to buy as a result of your technical evaluation is evidenced as:

meeting the Digital Scotland Service Standard (DSSS), especially DSSS criteria about choosing the right technology, understanding your users and accessibility
having a documented decision process - you might capture your evaluation in a Technology Options Appraisal document, especially if your procurement is complex or there are a high number of offers, but how you evidence your evaluation is up to you as long as your documentation is robust

The commercial evaluation, carried out by your DPO or procurement specialist, will often include 'weightings'. These will be applied to help prioritise your requirements, and evaluate which offer meets them in the most cost-effective way.

Once you've made the decision about what you're going to procure, your DPO or procurement specialist will sign a contract with the successful supplier.

Your contract will be a fully integrated, consistent suite of documents. It will define:

what you're buying, i.e. a specification
the method and timeframe for delivery, risk allocation and other key commercial terms, e.g. the payment mechanism and KPIs
what happens if things go wrong, i.e. that critical risk allocation is defined and properly reflected in the contract

The contract also makes sure:

decisions on contractual roles and responsibilities are documented
the rights and obligations of each party, and the associated contractual processes required to implement your procurement, are defined clearly

If the procurement was done through a framework, your supplier will generally have already signed up to pre-agreed, robust terms and conditions as part of their successful entry to a framework. If the procurement was done through a dynamic purchasing system, or in another way, this will not be the case, so your DPO or procurement specialist will help you put the terms together from a set of standard terms and conditions used for Scottish Government procurement contracts.

Proportionality

The complexity of your contract will match the scale, complexity, criticality and lifecycle of the goods or services your contract is for. If it's an ongoing product or service, you’ll need to make sure that your team is resourced to actively manage the relationship with your supplier and the product or service delivered through the contract.

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Early engagement

Use of Scottish Government procurement frameworks to procure what you need

Dynamic Purchasing Systems

CCS Frameworks

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Information

Information

Early engagement

Use of Scottish Government procurement frameworks to procure what you need

Dynamic Purchasing Systems

CCS Frameworks

There is a problem