Why we carry out procurement?

Procurements are a fundamental process that we carry out to ensure that it seeks value for money for the organisation and our residents. PA Housing is not committed to accepting the lowest price, but seeking a balance of quality, service, and cost will ensure that value for money is achieved. In addition to obtaining value for money, many procurements are carried to ensure: 

• Transparency, fairness, and openness are demonstrated. 
• Suppliers can demonstrate that they can deliver the service and have experience and expertise. 
• Risk is controlled. 
• An increase in competition. 
• Suppliers are placed into a contract. 
• Compliance with legislation. 

Procurement document suite 

All procurements from quotations to tenders will have a document suite, with the suite being carefully considered to match the works, goods, or services being procured. This, in some instances, may appear to be a considerable amount for what is being procured. The reason why we have a document suite is to ensure that the bidders have: 

• Visibility of the specification and supporting information.
• Visibility of internal policies that must be met. 
• Visibility of the contract. 
• The list of questions allows PA Housing to assess bidders. 

How to get it right? 

When we carry out procurement, we ask for responses so we can assess your organisation based on experience, knowledge, capacity, capability, ability, meeting the specification, understanding our need, and financial standing. The level of information to be submitted will vary from procurement to procurement. But to support you in ensuring you make the best bid you can, the following are some good rules: 

• Ensure that you leave yourself enough time to review the requirements and make a response.
• Never start uploading your procurement response at the last minute, be prepared and get all your documents ready. 
• Read the question and break it down into bite-size chunks. Have we asked you to explain, demonstrate or provide evidence? What is it asking?  
• Structure your response and if guidance is available, follow the advice. 
• Evidence what you are saying by using examples of what you have done in the past. 
• Review the scoring criteria and look for what is being evaluated.
• Use your word count wisely. 
• If unsure, use the correspondence function.