01. what doc­u­ments do you need for almost every IT pro­cure­ment?

Are you an IT pro­cur­er and won­der­ing what doc­u­ments you actu­al­ly need for every IT pro­cure­ment? Not an easy ques­tion. Because IT pro­cure­ments are spe­cial, at the same time you need all the doc­u­ments as in a “nor­mal” pro­cure­ment. We give you a brief overview of what you as an IT pro­cur­er should not do with­out when ten­der­ing IT ser­vices:

Pur­suant to Sec­tion 29 VgV; Sec­tion 21 UVgO; Sec­tion 8 VOL/A; the ten­der doc­u­ments must con­tain all infor­ma­tion nec­es­sary to enable the bid­der to decide whether to par­tic­i­pate in the award pro­ce­dure or to sub­mit a bid.Pursuant to Sec­tion 29 VgV; Sec­tion 21 UVgO; Sec­tion 8 VOL/A; the ten­der doc­u­ments must con­tain all infor­ma­tion nec­es­sary to enable the bid­der to decide whether to par­tic­i­pate in the award pro­ce­dure or to sub­mit a bid.
The doc­u­ments should there­fore be the basis for usable bids by the bid­ders, i.e. they must be as sim­ple and quick as pos­si­ble for the bid­der to com­pile (as long as nec­es­sary, as short as pos­si­ble), and at the same time they must con­tain the min­i­mum con­tent required by law so that the award can be made with legal cer­tain­ty.

For the sake of clar­i­ty alone, it is advis­able to divide the doc­u­ments into an infor­ma­tion sec­tion and a con­tract sec­tion.

In addi­tion to the cov­er let­ter, the infor­ma­tion sec­tion con­tains the appli­ca­tion require­ments.
The cov­er let­ter should briefly refer to the award pro­ce­dure as a sep­a­rate doc­u­ment in let­ter form.
The invi­ta­tion to ten­der must spec­i­fy the dead­line for sub­mis­sion of bids and the rel­e­vant dates, the type of award pro­ce­dure and the ref­er­ence num­ber of the con­tract­ing author­i­ty, and con­tain the invi­ta­tion to sub­mit a bid or — in the case of com­pet­i­tive bid­ding — to sub­mit a request to par­tic­i­pate (see min­i­mum con­tent pur­suant to Sec­tion 52 (2) VgV; Sec­tion 37 (2) UVgO).

The appli­ca­tion con­di­tions should pro­vide poten­tial bid­ders with an overview of the spe­cif­ic award pro­ce­dure. The suit­abil­i­ty and award cri­te­ria as well as their weight­ing must also be stat­ed (e.g. with the allo­ca­tion of eval­u­a­tion points), unless they are already includ­ed in the announce­ment. In addi­tion, it is advis­able to make pro­vi­sions for sub­se­quent changes to the offer as well as offer with­drawals. The con­tract­ing enti­ties may fur­ther­more, pur­suant to. § Sec­tion 25 UVgO; Sec­tion 35 VgV; Sec­tion 8 para. 4 VOL/A shall per­mit sec­ondary bids. Such a ref­er­ence may already be includ­ed in the notice or may only be includ­ed in the ten­der doc­u­ments. In the absence of a cor­re­spond­ing indi­ca­tion, sec­ondary bids shall be inad­mis­si­ble. In the case of EU-wide award pro­ce­dures, the Pro­cure­ment Cham­ber, includ­ing all con­tact details, must be named as the com­pe­tent body for review pro­ce­dures.

The con­tract sec­tion con­tains the con­tract doc­u­ments, i.e. the spec­i­fi­ca­tion of ser­vices (Sec­tion 23 UVgO; Sec­tion 31 VgV; Sec­tion 7 VOL/A) and the terms of con­tract (Sec­tion 21 (1) No. 3 UVgO; Sec­tion 29 (1) No. 3 VgV; Sec­tion 9 VOL/A). In prin­ci­ple, VOL/B must be includ­ed in the con­tract (Sec­tion 21 (2) UVgO; Sec­tion 29 (2) VgV; Sec­tion 9 VOL/A). In the case of IT con­tracts, it is reg­u­lar­ly advis­able to pre­pare a price sheet form. In addi­tion, a cat­a­log of cri­te­ria is usu­al­ly attached to the ser­vice descrip­tion.

When award­ing IT con­tracts, par­tic­u­lar atten­tion must be paid to the ser­vice descrip­tion — inad­e­quate ser­vice descrip­tions are the most fre­quent cause of esca­lat­ing costs, risk sur­charges and missed dead­lines, espe­cial­ly in IT projects! As part of the ser­vice descrip­tion, it is advis­able to refer to IT-spe­cif­ic stan­dards and norms (such as the IT Infra­struc­ture Library, ISO/IEC 20000, EN ISO 9241) in order to com­mu­ni­cate clear require­ments. In addi­tion, the prin­ci­ple of prod­uct neu­tral­i­ty must be observed here (see #).
Often enough, how­ev­er, it is not pos­si­ble to describe the ser­vice in detail, espe­cial­ly in the case of IT con­tracts, because the client lacks the tech­ni­cal know-how (which is pre­cise­ly why he is invit­ing ten­ders for the ser­vice). The ser­vice descrip­tion must there­fore con­tain at least one clear objec­tive (so-called func­tion­al ser­vice descrip­tion). Par­tic­u­lar­ly in soft­ware devel­op­ment projects, the select­ed process mod­el must be includ­ed in the ser­vice descrip­tion. A spec­i­fi­ca­tion sheet is also reg­u­lar­ly enclosed: From the cus­tomer’s point of view, it con­tains all the require­ments to be met by the con­trac­tor. It is com­plet­ed by the con­trac­tor’s sub­se­quent spec­i­fi­ca­tions.

The cri­te­ria cat­a­log, in turn, sup­ple­ments the per­for­mance spec­i­fi­ca­tion. The exclu­sion and eval­u­a­tion cri­te­ria con­tained there­in describe which require­ments are placed on bid­ders and accord­ing to which cri­te­ria the con­tract is award­ed. It should be not­ed in this con­text that tech­ni­cal inno­va­tions often play a spe­cial role, espe­cial­ly in the IT sec­tor, and that many mar­ket par­tic­i­pants are young start-ups with­out numer­ous ref­er­ences. This aspect must be tak­en into account when for­mu­lat­ing the suit­abil­i­ty cri­te­ria so as not to exclude mar­ket new­com­ers from the out­set by impos­ing require­ments that demand that the com­pa­nies actu­al­ly estab­lish them­selves in the mar­ket.

In con­clu­sion, we there­fore rec­om­mend the fol­low­ing out­line of the ten­der doc­u­ments:

I. Infor­ma­tion sec­tion

1. Cov­er let­ter
2. Appli­ca­tion con­di­tions
   1. Descrip­tion of the details of the imple­men­ta­tion of the award pro­ce­dure, esp. Dead­line infor­ma­tion
   2. Instruc­tions for the prepa­ra­tion of the offer (form, con­tent, struc­ture), evt. Indi­ca­tion of the admis­sion of sec­ondary offers
   3. Suit­abil­i­ty and award cri­te­ria and notes on weight­ing
   4. Final list of all request­ed proofs and dec­la­ra­tions
   5. Indi­ca­tion of the com­pe­tent award­ing cham­ber and instruc­tions on how to appeal (in the case of EU-wide awards)

II. con­tract doc­u­ments

1. Draft con­tract with con­tract terms (EVB-IT AGB; VOL/B)
2. Per­for­mance descrip­tion and cri­te­ria cat­a­log plus Attach­ments (process mod­el, spec­i­fi­ca­tions)
3. Price sheet

We hope this has helped. If you are still won­der­ing what doc­u­ments you need, for exam­ple, to buy a license, do not hes­i­tate and call us. We look for­ward to speak­ing with you!