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What is required from the project lead or consultant?

To help facilitate this, principal investigators, project leads, or consultants, are required to provide Procurement with all documentation to be issued. This can be done via email or OneDrive in order that these can be reviewed and signed off prior to upload and issue.

The maximum individual folder or file size should, ideally, not exceed 20MB, however where larger files are required these may be zipped prior to upload.  Please note that documents that require input from the tenderer (i.e. pricing documents) must not be provided by the consultant or project lead for example in PDF.  If a response is needed in a particular format this should be stated within the Specification Requirements.

In addition to the project documents received, Procurement also includes the following as part of the core tender pack:

• Specification
• Pricing schedule (if applicable)
• Form of tender
• Certificate of bona fide tender
• Sustainable and ethical procurement policy
• Privacy notice
• Appendix A: reference projects (if applicable)
• Tender return template

What other information do Procurement need from the project lead or consultant?

• Approximate project value.
  • Please ensure estimates are as accurate as possible, as saying you thought an estimate would be under threshold is not an excuse to avoid a tender process and may be in breach of regulations.
  • If the estimated project value is likely to be close to a threshold, it is best to err on the side of caution and follow the process that would apply if it turned out the estimate was too low.i

The above allows Procurement to determine the correct advice and tender route.

• VAT treatment – what rating is applicable? If you need to engage with the Tax and Treasury team in advance they can be contacted on vatenquiries@st-andrews.ac.uk.
• The GL coding structure that has been assigned.
• Any known potential supplier details.
• The approved budget holder- if you are not the budget holder, then sign-off will have to come from this person also. Projects cannot be issued by Procurement at any stage of the process without budget holder sign-off.
• Do these works or services have any dependencies on other Units such as
  • Finance – Tax and Treasury HMRC MTD compliance for systems or system updates handling financial transactions
  • Estates
  • IT Services (relevant stakeholder party, ie ICT Purchasing, CSTIRT)
  • Environment Team – sustainable input
  • Principal’s Office (GDPR or privacy notice), if the answer is yes, do you have sign-off from Chris Milne to proceed?
  • Equipment only:  planning (asset or insurance) room location, floor and building where goods are to be installed.
  • Legal (SAAS agreement or funds available) to cover legal costs.
  • Research Grant funded: please advise of grant end date by which funds must be spent or committed.

Note:  documents submitted to Procurement for issue and upload should contain no more than 70 characters within the document title name.  The title name should also not contain symbol characters or dots.

Award criteria and scoring methodology

All tenders issued must detail within the general Instruction or specification the award criteria and scoring methodology by which they will be evaluated.  Criteria should be split between price (which should, wherever applicable, reflect total cost) and quality (subdivided to reflect key quality elements applicable to the project) with weightings applied to each.  This scoring must be agreed with the client project manager and will be detailed in the tender documentation issued.

Principal investigators or project leads should ensure that both the award criteria and scoring methodology meet the requirements or scope of works detailed, as the appraisal of tender submissions must be carried out in line with these and by those completing the evaluation.

For example, if within the scoring methodology, section marks are out of 10, with the scoring allocation stated as 10, 7, 5 or 1-mark, the evaluation team cannot allocate a score of 6.

Once the evaluation process is completed, Procurement requires details on the appraisal of all bids – including scoring, details of where marks were deducted and why, and details of the relative merits of the successful bid(s).  This allows Procurement to prepare the notification to advise suppliers of the outcome – whether they have been successful or unsuccessful and give feedback and debrief on individual bids.  This is a requirement under legislation that we are obliged to do, as well as being able to keep a full audit trail on the communications issued as the project progresses towards the final stages.

Site visit

If a site visit is required, then a date and time should be agreed on (usually this would be about 2 weeks into the project going live, approximately week 4 of timeline below) – this allows the tenderers time to express an interest in the project and review the tender documents.  In addition to the date and time, Procurement also needs to be advised of who will be facilitating this and to whom and where the Tenderers should report to.

Tenderers are required to register for the site visit via the InTend portal, Procurement will record details of the names of those requesting to attend the site visit and will provide details prior to the event date.

Note:  during the site visit, the project lead or consultant should capture any questions received (together with the response provided) and issue these to Procurement as soon as possible following the site visit, ideally within a 24 hour window.  Any new information that is also shared during the walkaround should also be provided to ensure that this information can be circulated via the portal for fairness and transparency to all parties participating in the tender whether they have attended the site visit or not.

Example project or tender timeline

Week 1:

• Action project lead or consultant: documents issued to procurement

Week 1 or 2:

• Action Procurement: documents reviewed and dates assigned
• Action project lead or consultant: documents issued for sign-off (sign off must come from Budget Holder/University project lead.

Week 2:

• Action Procurement: project goes live on portal(s)

Weeks 2 or 3:

• Action project lead or consultant: questions may be received from suppliers – to ensure that the project runs to schedule, responses, if possible, should be issued to procurement within a 48 hour window.
• University project lead must confirm/sign off on responses.

Week 4:

• Action project lead or consultant: site visit – provide procurement with any questions asked or additional information provided

Week 5:

• Action procurement: tender closing date or opening ceremony and logging of bids.
• Action project lead or consultant: evaluation of bids.

Week 6:

• Action project lead or consultant: once bid evaluation complete, tender report and scoring to be sent to procurement for verification.
• Action Procurement: scoring verified and sign-off requested from project lead or budget holder.

Week 7:

• Action Procurement: once sign-of received, both successful or unsuccessful parties can be advised of the outcome.

Clarifications or communication with suppliers

All correspondence and clarification requests made during the tender period must be received and issued by Procurement via In-Tend in order that the University maintains a full audit trail throughout the process. 

It is normal practice to receive questions from suppliers who have expressed an interest.  These Tenderers may require further clarification on what has (or hasn’t) been issued content-wise.  Can Procurement please ask if there are multiple colleagues, that is, project managers, project leads, consultants involved in the tender process – that clear responses are provided to each question raised. 

It may be that you will need to take some of these conversations offline and not include Procurement at this point.  When you are ready to provide an update, your response should also be written in the format you wish it to be published.

Note:  consultants must note that any responses to queries or clarifications to be issued must be signed off by the client project manager prior to issue by Procurement.

Acceptance, or award letter, and purchase orders

Once the evaluation process is complete and prior to sending to the Director of Procurement for review and sign-off, the principal investigator or project manager must check the information provided by consultants and ensure they are happy with it, and that due process has been followed.  Providing that project board or court approval has also been granted, then the acceptance or award letter can be prepared and issued for signing by the appropriate party.

Once these documents have been electronically signed and converted to PDF, they are required to be sent to Procurement for issue via the portal for audit purposes.  Again, under legislation Procurement are required to advise all parties at the same point whether they have been successful or unsuccessful. 

Note:  no communication in respect of the Award should be issued via Estates to the supplier directly unless advised otherwise by Procurement.

Requesting a new supplier (Oracle Fusion)

Please follow the guidance on requesting a new supplier.  Before you start, sew supplier requests should only be submitted by an Oracle Fusion buyer.

• If you are not an Oracle Fusion buyer for your School or Unit, contact the relevant person on the Oracle buyer list (available soon).
• If you are an Oracle Fusion buyer, follow the above guidance before submitting your new supplier request.

Procurement contacts

Adrian Wood, Director of Procurement

Email:  aw18@st-andrews.ac.uk
Phone:  01334 462512
Mobile:  07767832959

Sarah Cutler, Senior Procurement Officer

Email:  slc30@st-andrews.ac.uk
Phone:  01334 464073

Sarah Latto, Procurement Officer

Email:  sl16@st-andrews.ac.uk
Phone:  01334 464113