OJEU Tender Document Ready At Point of Advertisement

Should your tender document be ready at the point of issuing an OJEU?

Regulation 53 requires all contracting authorities to offer full and unrestricted access to all the procurement
documents from the date that a contract (OJEU) notice (or invitation to confirm interest following a PIN) is
published in the OJEU. “Procurement documents” is a defined term in the PCR 2015 and will include, in
addition to the call for competition itself, and non-exhaustively, technical specifications, descriptive
documents, pre-qualification questionnaires, invitations to tender, and the terms and conditions of the
contract.

Non-exhaustive in my opinion means that you should try and provide as much information as possible up front to allow bidders a fair chance to decide whether if it is worth their time and effort to participate in the tender process. If the competition is complex and at the time of advertising documents need to be updated for example at the Award stage, then supplementary documents should be added as long as they do not amend the initial award criteria. The regulations state that the list of initial documents are non-exhaustive therefore we can not always anticipate every single document required even if an OJEU notice has been published.

Some process is more complex such as competitive dialogue or competitive procedure with negotiation or innovation partnerships, therefore documents may need to be added and circulated amongst bidders at a later stage as and when they become known.