e-Tendering

The LSC requires all 2010 bids to be made via its tendering portal. It is absolutely vital that you keep an eye on the LSC website for tendering deadlines.

Currently the Mental Health tender opens on the 10th February 2010 with the Family/Social Welfare Law scheduled to commence on week commencing 22nd February.

We have accessed the tendering portal and it isn't user-friendly at all. There is a tutorial available which we suggest you check out as it would be impenetrable without guidance.

It is essential that you login as soon as possible so that you can check out the Pre Qualification Questions (PQQ). These include a variety of questions relating to the status of your firm such as insurance cover, professional conduct issues. You need to be very careful with this as there are potential 'show-stopper' questions.

One particular issue is the necessity to quote your registration reference with the Information Commissioner. If you have not registerd now you need to do so urgently on the Information Commissioners website.

We have recently experienced some panics as a result of LSC Relationship Managers suggesting that firms should be completing the PQQ before the tenders open. Whilst we believe that you can do this technically we wonder about the wisdom of the advice from a legal standpoint. For example what if having submitted your PQQ in advance of the tender opening, the LSC changes the PQQ? What if there was some flaw in your PQQ, would you have legal redress? As Donald Rumsfeld said, there are known unknowns..... All we would say is tread carefully.

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Having seen the e-portal it seems unquestionable to us that firms are going to make fatal mistakes that could see them losing their contracts.

Firstly the LSC's communication of the tender dates has been very poor. Frankly it needs to up its game as the consequences for firms are so grave. Also the tendering portal is totally confusing with regard to the tendering deadlines.

Secondly, the LSC seems to have forgotten that the profession has largely little experience of tendering and virtually no experience at all of e-tendering. To foist a confusing website and complex, multiple bid rounds on such a group is high risk indeed. There has also been no formal training - a self help web video is not good enough.

We ask that the LSC think again even at this late juncture. We feel that the LSC is being reckless in its appraoch and large numbers of firms are going to lose their livelihood as a result of simple oversights or errors. And that is before we get into the byzantine nature of essential and selection criteria.

After the BVT debacle and NAO savaging, the reality is that the LSC cannot make another serious mistake. We feel that the smart money is that they will...