Principles
- The Commonwealth Procurement Rules (CPRs) require entities to:
- provide an unsuccessful tenderer with the reasons its submission was not successful; and
- on request, provide debriefings to successful tenderers.
- Effective feedback provides transparency and accountability and assists in educating the market which, in turn, may assist to improve the standard of submissions in the future.
- As a matter of good practice, entities should offer a full debrief to unsuccessful tenderers irrespective of whether a tenderer has requested a debrief.
Practice
- Feedback can be provided at various stages during the procurement process.
- Before evaluation: Where a tender is rejected prior to evaluation reasons because it was late; it did not conform to the minimum content and format requirements; or it did not satisfy the conditions for participation, feedback should be provided about how the submission failed but there should be no discussion about the continuing procurement process.
- After shortlisting: At the end of the shortlisting process, entity may wish to notify tenderers who are not 'shortlisted' that their submission is not being considered further at that time, and note that a full debrief will be provided at the conclusion of the procurement process.
- After Contract Award: At the end of the tender process, the entity must promptly inform all tenderers of the decision and, on request provide an unsuccessful tenderer with the reasons its submission was not successful. However, as a matter of good practice, entity should offer to provide feedback in person in the form of a debriefing session.
- In providing feedback, whether in writing or in person, officials should provide:
- an explanation of why the submission was unsuccessful;
- information about areas of weakness or non-compliance in the submission; and
- suggestions on how to improve future submissions.
- Officials may wish to ask unsuccessful tenderers to provide a list of questions prior to the debriefing session to determine key areas the tenderer would like to focus on.
