Equal Treatment of Bidders in Public Procurement - Finding the Balance

Introduction

Public procurement is an area of law in constant flux, perhaps now more than ever, which makes managing and advising on procurement exercises and challenges a matter of complex balancing exercises.

The duty to treat suppliers equally is the only one of the four 'principles of procurement' retained as a specific 'procurement objective' by the Procurement Act 2023.

The principle of equal treatment of bidders sounds deceptively simple but can be very difficult to apply in practice. In this webinar, we explore recent cases in the area including Working on Wellbeing, Inhealth, Consultant Connect and Landkreis Aichach-Friedberg, and what is likely to change under the Procurement Act 2024.

It will consider how best to deal with difficult situations such as when to disqualify and when not to, how to handle exclusion criteria, the best way of drafting the ITT to minimise difficulties further along in the process, and how to deal with unexpected issues arising during submissions, evaluation, scoring and debriefing.

What You Will Learn

This webinar will cover the following:

• Tips for drafting an ITT and contracting authority requirements
• How to apply exclusion criteria
• How to deal with challenging situations that arise during the procurement process
• When to disqualify and when not to disqualify bidders
• Dealing with difficult situations at the end of the process

This pre-recorded webinar will be available to view from Wednesday 12th March 2025

Alternatively, you can gain access to this webinar and 1,700+ others via the MBL Webinar Subscription. Please email webinarsubscription@mblseminars.com for more details.