a) For private sector suppliers to put together good quality bids they need to know as clearly as possible what a department requires of them.
■ National Savings specified the service standards to be achieved and provided as much information as possible on likely volumes of activity and any constraints which the private sector needed to be aware of.
b) By specifying requirements in output terms departments will permit innovation in how services are delivered.
■ National Savings specified its requirements in output terms. For example, it specified a data warehouse and the data that should go in it but not how SBS should do it.
c) Departments should allow adequate time for procurement of the project.
■ National Savings extended the procurement timetable to allow it to develop a comprehensive set of output specifications for the Invitation to Negotiate.
d) It is common to choose the short list of bidders following a pre-qualification competition. In such cases, the choice should be based on the ranking of bidders in the pre-qualification.
■ National Savings chose the four bidders for the Information Memorandum stage of the procurement in accordance with their ranking in pre-qualification.
e) Departments need to strike a balance between proceeding with too few competitors and too many. If there are too few, there is the risk that competition could be weakened, especially if one or more bidders were to drop out prematurely.
■ National Savings considered that it had to balance the maintenance of competitive tension in the final stage of bidding and the significant costs for both sides in formulating final bids and evaluating them. In this instance, competitive tension was maintained between two final bidders by negotiating a draft contract with each of them before recommending a preferred bidder.
f) In principle, departments should seek to finalise all fundamental aspects of the contract prior to contract award.
■ National Savings agreed all fundamental aspects of the contract with SBS before selecting it as preferred bidder after which final negotiations took two weeks without any changes in the price agreed.
g) Departments should set and monitor budgets for their likely resource costs (both internal and external) after careful consideration of the likely expenditure.
■ National Savings set budgets for advisers and closely monitored expenditure as the project progressed.
h) Save in exceptional circumstances, departments should always appoint their external advisers after competition.
■ National Savings appointed advisers following competitions.