Tendering
Registering your interest
How to register your interest in providing goods/services to Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council.
If you would like to register as a prospective supplier to Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council please register on the Sell2Wales website.
What is Sell2Wales?
The Sell2 Wales website lists all the public sector tenders that have been published in Wales.
Sell2Wales is the Wales National Procurement website. It is a Welsh Government website that aims to help small and medium business organisations to works successfully with the Welsh public sector.
Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council aims to advertise any contracts in excess of £25,000 on the Sell2Wales website.
The Tendering Process
When a Contract Notice is published on Sell2Wales, potential suppliers will receive a notification of the Notice being published. It is essential that registered suppliers complete their profiles correctly and select appropriate work categories as these are used to match suppliers to Contract Notices. Sell2Wales Notices will usually contain a tender reference and a link to eTenderWales unless Sell2Wales is used as a postbox to receive quotes or tenders.
Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council conducts tendering activity electronically using the eTenderWales e-sourcing system. Potential suppliers will need to ensure they are registered on the system to enable the submission of tenders.
The eTenderWales system is organised into 4 main areas:
- Attachments: containing the Invitation to Tender document and any other relevant documents related to the requirements.
- Qualification Envelope: containing selection questions (usually pass/fail), the majority of these questions are set out in Procurement Regulations and are intended to assess whether the Council will contract with a potential supplier.
- Technical Envelope: containing quality criteria relative to each requirement.
- Commercial Envelope: containing commercial pricing
Preparing your tender
It is important that when preparing your tender you carefully read all of the documentation you are provided with. If you have any queries you should raise them via the eTenderWales system. To maintain audit trails and maintain equal treatment, the Council will not accept communications outside of eTenderWales during a tender process.
When preparing your tender you should consider the following:
- Answer all questions as fully as possible - do not assume that the Council knows your business and its capabilities. All tenders are evaluated at face value with the prescribed evaluation methodology detailed within the tender documents.
- Provide all requested information
- Above all, ensure that you prepare in plenty of time and also that your completed tender is submitted via eTenderWales by the time and date specified with the tender documentation and on the system. Tender responses are usually opened on the same day as the closing date/time and means that late tenders are not accepted.
Tender Evaluation
Following receipt of your tender submission we will schedule evaluation of tender responses received. All tenders are evaluated at face value upon the information provided by you and scores are allocated to the quality submissions in line with the methodologies contained within the tender documents. Price submissions are normally evaluated on a lowest cost basis using a formula to calculate highest bids, however, other methods of price evaluation may be used such as average, narrow average. We may contact you to clarify certain aspects of your tender and/or ask you to attend a meeting to discuss your tender submission. We may also decide that a visit to your business premises is necessary to assess your ability to satisfy the requirements of a particular contract.
Whether you win or lose, you will be entitled to a de-brief and this is usually provided in the outcome letters sent through eTenderWales. This will help you to understand where you were not successful and may assist you in planning for future submissions.
Freedom of Information
As a supplier/tenderer/partner/customer/agency providing services to the Council, you should be aware of our obligations and responsibilities under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to provide, upon request, access to recorded information held by the Council.
One consequence of these statutory responsibilities is that information held by the Council about your organisation may be subject to disclosure in response to a request; unless we decide that one of the various statutory exemptions apply.
Collaboration
Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council collaborates with various organisations.
We access Welsh arrangements provided by Welsh Government Commercial Services and other frameworks provided by Crown Commercial Services (CCS) and Eastern Shires Purchasing Organisation (ESPO) for example.
On a regional level, we collaborate with a number of neighbouring Local Authorities to deliver various projects, helping to provide significant savings and sharing best practice.
Further Support
Local businesses can obtain further support via Merthyr Tydfil Enterprise Centre (MTEC).