The Practice of Public Procurement: Tendering, Selection and Award

When buying goods or services on behalf of a public authority, procurement officers must translate the buyer’s needs into tender documents that are clear, lawful, and well-designed.

This guide helps them in this task. Rich in practical examples, it is written for procurement practitioners at all levels of government – from the local to the international – including drafters of calls for tenders, controllers, tender evaluators, managers who authorize public expenditure, risk managers and auditors, as well as for students of public procurement law and public administration.

The questions addressed in the book are, among others:-

• How do I design a procurement process that is simple, fair and inviting?
• How do I choose appropriate selection criteria?
• How do I draw up a realistic price schedule?
• How do I weight my award criteria so that I get best value for money?

This guide integrates rules and lessons from the EU Public Procurement Directive of 2014 and procurement case-law of the European Court of Justice. Its fundamental recommendations on how to improve the economic efficiency of procurement design however apply in any national system.