This guide provides a background to the new emphasis by purchasing authorities on tendering for contracts rather than providing grant aid for organisations. This is a new approach for many organisations in the voluntary, care, health and housing sectors, although long established for other types of organisations particularly those providing supplies and capital works for publicly funded authorities.

Public purchasing is undertaken in two stages – commissioning and procurement. The two functions must be kept separate.

Commissioning identifies the service to be purchased, so the relevant officers often sit within departments with titles such as "Adult Services".

Procurement is a wholly legal function based on compliance issues, so the officers sit within the purchaser’s legal department with titles such as "the Chief Executive’s Department".

All tendering, regardless of the precise procedure being used, is operated through a number of phases.

Commissioning and procurement

Commissioning

• Producing the commissioning plan which will inform the specifications for future contracts, and therefore tenders. 
• Making the business case.
• Holding and managing the budget.

Procurement

• Defining the purchasing process and procedure to be used.
• Ensuring the process complies with all relevant legislation.
• Ensuring that accepted tendering organisations:
  - are compliant with relevant corporate legislation;
  - are of sound financial standing; and
  - represent minimal business risk.
• Entering into contracts.

This usually involves the submission of a pre-qualification questionnaire (PQQ). It is managed and, more importantly, scored by officers from the procurement section rather than the commissioning department. One local authority used a firm of solicitors to conduct the selection stage. An important lesson to learn from this is that you need to make clear, evidenced statements when completing the first stage documentation, in particular the PQQ.

Do not assume that those making the selection at this stage have any knowledge whatsoever of the service being provided or that they will be commissioning officers

This is crucially important for all organisations engaged in tendering as the selection phase is the entry, or gateway to the full tender award phase. Failure at the selection phase can mean exclusion from the award phase, and thus the ability to sell services to a particular purchasing authority for periods of up to eight years.

The second or "award" stage deals more with how the service specified is to be delivered, often including a "method statement". This is usually scored by commissioning officers, although procurement officers will also have an input into the scoring.

Make no assumptions that those reading your documents at either selection or award stage know anything about your organisation, the services which you provide or your quality standards. Explain everything in detail – if you do not write it down and provide supporting evidence you cannot score.