Bidding methods are what

Currently, the relevant procurement laws and rules of the world's countries and relevant international organizations provide for three types of bidding and tendering methods, such as open tendering, invitations to tender and negotiated tenders.

Public tender

Public tender, also known as competitive bidding, that is, by the bidder in the newspaper, electronic network or other media published a tender notice, to attract a large number of business units to participate in the bidding competition, the bidder from which the bidding method of selecting the winning unit. According to the degree of competition, public tender can be divided into international competitive bidding and domestic competitive bidding.

(a) international competitive bidding

This is a worldwide bidding, domestic and foreign qualified bidders can bid. Requirements for the production of a complete tender in English, in the international through a variety of publicity media to publish tender notices. For example, the World Bank on the procurement of goods and works for loan projects stipulates three principles: attention must be paid to saving money and improving efficiency, that is, cost-effective; to provide all member countries of the World Bank to provide equal opportunities for competition without discrimination against bidders; conducive to the promotion of the borrowing country's own construction and manufacturing industry development. The World Bank starts from these three principles when determining the procurement methods for projects, of which international competitive bidding is the most used and accounts for the largest amount of procurement. It is characterized by high efficiency, economy and fairness, especially when the amount of procurement contracts is large and the requirements of goods and works of interest to foreign bidders must be subject to international competitive bidding. The World Bank, according to the situation of different regions and countries, has stipulated that international competitive bidding must be used for all goods and works contracts with procurement amounts above a certain limit. For the general borrowing countries, the goods procurement contracts above 10.25 million dollars and the large and medium-sized engineering procurement contracts should adopt the international competitive bidding. China's loan projects are generally larger, the World Bank of China's international competitive bidding procurement limits have been relaxed, industrial project procurement where more than 1 million U.S. dollars, should be used in international competitive bidding to carry out.

Practice has shown that, despite the complexity of the international competitive bidding procedures, but there are indeed many advantages. First of all, due to fierce competition in bidding, generally can be favorable to the buyer's price procurement to the need for equipment and engineering. Secondly, advanced equipment, technology and engineering and management experience can be introduced. Third, it can ensure that all qualified bidders have the opportunity to participate in the bidding. Thanks to the objective criteria for measuring goods, equipment and works in international competitive bidding, manufacturers and contractors in developing countries can be encouraged to improve the quality of their products and construction of works and enhance their international competitiveness. Fourthly, it ensures that procurement is conducted openly and objectively in accordance with procedures and criteria that are pre-specified and known to all, thus reducing the possibility of cheating in procurement.

Of course, international competitive bidding also has some shortcomings, mainly: (1) international competitive bidding is more time-consuming. International competitive bidding has a set of thorough and more complex procedures, from the tender notice, bidders to respond, bid evaluation to the award of the contract, generally have to six months to more than a year. (2) international competitive bidding need to prepare more documents. The bidding documents should clearly regulate various technical specifications, bid evaluation criteria, and the obligations of buyers and sellers. Any ambiguity or lack of clarity in the bidding documents may lead to the implementation of the contract disagreement, and even cause disputes. In addition, a large number of documents have to be translated into international common language, thus increasing the workload. (3) Among the successful suppliers and contractors, the share of developing countries is very small. In the World Bank for the procurement of the total amount of loans, international competitive bidding accounted for about 60%, of which, developed countries such as the United States, Germany, Japan and other developed countries, the winning bid accounted for about 80%.

(ii) domestic competitive bidding

Bidding in the country, available in the national language to prepare tenders, only in the domestic media advertisements, public sale of tenders, public bid opening. It is usually used for procurement where the contract amount is relatively small (World Bank regulations: generally less than US$500,000), where the variety of purchases is more dispersed, where the delivery time in batches is longer, where it is labor-intensive, where the cost of the goods is lower but the freight costs are higher, and where the local price is significantly lower than in the international market. In addition, where the procurement of goods or construction of works from domestic sources can result in significant time savings, and where such facilitation will be important for the implementation of the project, procurement may also be procured by competitive bidding only at the domestic level. In the case of domestic competitive bidding, foreign companies should be permitted to bid under domestic competitive bidding if they wish to do so, and no artificial obstacles should be placed in the way of their fair participation in the competition. The procedures for domestic competitive bidding are broadly the same as for international competitive bidding. Because domestic competitive bidding limits the scope of competition, usually foreign suppliers can not get information about the tender, which is inconsistent with the principle of bidding, so the relevant international organizations on domestic competitive bidding are restricted.

Invitation to tender

Also known as limited competitive bidding or selective bidding, that is, by the bidding unit to select a certain number of enterprises, to send an invitation to tender, invite them to participate in the bidding competition. Generally choose between 310 to participate in more appropriate, of course, depending on the size of the specific bidding project. Because of the limited number of bidding competitors invited to participate, it not only saves on bidding costs, but also improves the chances of each bidder winning the tender. However, because the invitation to tender limits full competition, the bidding and tendering regulations generally provide that the bidder should try to use open tendering.

Invitational bidding is characterized by (1) invitations to tender do not use the form of public announcements; (2) acceptance of invitations to the unit is only qualified bidders; (3) the number of bidders is limited.

Invitation to tender compared with public tendering, because it is not necessary to publish a tender notice, the tender documents are sent to only a few, the bidding validity period is greatly shortened, which is very necessary for the procurement of those commodities with large price fluctuations, can reduce the risk of bidding and bidding prices. Such as fishing powder is the most typical example of the use of international limited tender. Only a few countries in the world production, if the use of international competitive bidding, will lead to the opening of the bid after the results of no one bid, such a situation in the actual business does occur. Many commodities are often changed to invited tenders only after the use of international tenders with no bidders, which affects the efficiency of tendering. For example, in the EU's public **** procurement rules, if the procurement amount exceeds the legal limit, must use the form of tender, the project legal person has the right to freely choose to open tender or invite tenders, and due to the invitational tendering has the advantages mentioned above, so in the EU's member states, invitational tendering is widely used.

Deliberative bidding

Deliberative bidding is also known as negotiated bidding or restricted bidding, that is, through negotiation to determine the winning bidder. There are mainly the following ways: (1) direct invitation to bidding. Selection of the winning unit is not through open or invited bidding, but by the bidder or its agent to directly invite a particular enterprise for individual consultation, after reaching an agreement on the signing of the procurement contract. If consultation with one enterprise fails, another enterprise may be invited until an agreement is reached; (2) price comparison and negotiation. "Price comparison" is a method of solicitation that combines the characteristics of invitations to tender and consultations, and is generally used in the procurement of small-scale, simple projects and goods. The usual practice is by the bidder will purchase the relevant requirements sent to the selected enterprises, requiring them to make a quotation at the agreed time, the bidding unit after analysis and comparison, select the reasonable offer of enterprises, on the construction period, cost, quality and payment terms and other details of the negotiation, so as to reach an agreement to sign the contract; (3) program competition bidding method. It is a common way to select engineering planning and design tasks. Usually the organization is open, can also invite the pre-selected planning and design institutions to participate in the competition. The general practice is to put forward by the bidder planning and design of the basic requirements and investment control amount, and provide feasibility study report or design task book, site plan, the site conditions and environmental conditions, as well as planning, design management department of the relevant provisions of the basic information, to participate in the competition unit accordingly put forward their own planning or design of the preliminary program, to elaborate on the program's strengths and weaknesses, and put forward the planning or design task of the main staffing. The main staffing of the planning or design task, the time and schedule for completing the task, the total investment estimate and design, etc., are submitted to the bidder. The bidder then invites a selection committee composed of relevant experts to select the winning unit, and the bidder signs a contract with the winner. The unsuccessful participants in the review unit to give some compensation.

In addition, in science and technology bidding, usually use public bidding, but not open the bidding negotiation. Bidding units in the bidding unit received the bid, first on technology, design, processing, credit capacity and other aspects of adjustment, and to obtain preliminary recognition on the basis of the selection of an ideal pre-successful bidder and negotiate with the bid to adjust the consultation, such as to achieve consensus, can be set as the winning unit, if not, then look for the second pre-successful bidder. This time and again, until the two sides reached agreement. This negotiation makes the bidding unit has more flexibility, you can choose to the more ideal suppliers and contractors.

Because the bidding of the winning bidder is produced through negotiation, not easy for the public to monitor, easy to lead to illegal transactions, therefore, China's mechanical and electrical equipment bidding regulations, prohibit the use of this method. Even if it is allowed to use the negotiation of the bidding method, but also most of the negotiation of the bidding method to do a strict limit. The UNCITRAL Model Law on Procurement of Goods, Construction and Services provides that, subject to the approval of the enacting State, a bidder may engage in procurement by means of negotiated tenders where: (1) there is an urgent need for the goods, construction or services, and it is impractical to engage in tendering proceedings, provided that the circumstances giving rise to such urgency were not foreseen by, and were not the result of, dilatory conduct on the part of the procuring entity; and (2) as a result of a catastrophic event, there is an urgent need for the goods, construction or services, and it is not practical to engage in tendering proceedings. catastrophic event, there is an urgent need for the goods, construction or services, and the use of other means would be impracticable as being too time-consuming. In order to make the negotiation of tenders reflect as far as possible the principles of fairness and impartiality in tendering, the UNCITRAL Model Law on Procurement of Goods, Construction and Services also provides that, in the course of the negotiation of tenders, the bidders shall hold negotiations with a sufficient number of suppliers or contractors to ensure effective competition, and in the case of the use of invitations to quotations, a minimum of three; and that any provisions relating to the negotiations that are communicated by the bidders to a particular supplier and contractor, Guidelines, documents, clarifications or other information sent by a bidder to a supplier or contractor in connection with the negotiations shall be communicated on an equal basis to all other suppliers or contractors with which the bidder is negotiating; the negotiations between the bidder and a supplier or contractor shall be confidential, and no party to the negotiations shall disclose to any other person any technical data, price or other market information relating to the negotiations without the consent of the other party.