The BöB, the Swiss federal act on public procurement, is the legal basis for how federal bodies buy goods, services and construction work. It answers three questions: who is subject to the act, in which procedure a contract must be awarded, and what legal remedies a supplier has if it considers itself disadvantaged. For companies wanting to sell to the federal government, it is therefore the rulebook that defines market access.
Why the law exists
Public procurement differs fundamentally from private purchasing. A private company may buy from whom it likes and owes nobody a reasoned rejection. A public body spends taxpayers’ money and is therefore bound by principles: equal treatment of all suppliers, transparency of the procedure, economical use of funds, and effective competition. Those principles are the core of the act; every procedural rule can be read as their practical expression. Understanding this lets you interpret what a rule is driving at even in unclear cases. The revised procurement law has added aspects such as sustainability and compliance with working conditions, which today regularly appear in suitability and award criteria.
Scope
The BöB applies to federal awarding bodies — the central federal administration, decentralised units, and certain undertakings in sectors such as transport, energy or water supply, insofar as they meet the statutory conditions. Not every contract of those bodies falls into the full scope, however. What governs is the contract value relative to the applicable thresholds and the type of contract, meaning whether it is a supply, a service or construction work. Below certain thresholds simpler procedures are permitted; above them the treaty requirements apply. Thresholds are revised periodically and should always be checked in their current version rather than recalled from memory.
BöB and IVöB — the most common confusion
For suppliers, the most important distinction is between the BöB and the IVöB. The BöB applies to federal procurement. Awards by cantons, municipalities and the bodies attached to them follow not the BöB but the Intercantonal Agreement on Public Procurement and the relevant cantonal law. The two regimes were substantially aligned in the course of the revision, which considerably simplifies life for suppliers: terminology, procedure types and principles are today largely parallel. They are not identical, however, and jurisdiction and the appeal route differ. Anyone working on a tender should therefore first establish which regime applies.
The procedure types
The act recognises several procedures differing in accessibility and formality. In the open procedure, any interested company may submit a bid. In the selective procedure, an application comes first, from which the awarding body selects the suppliers permitted to bid. In the invitation procedure, the awarding body invites a limited number of suppliers directly. In the direct-award procedure it awards without a tender, which is permitted only under narrow statutory conditions. Which procedure applies depends on contract value and contract type — and the choice of procedure is itself reviewable if a supplier argues a more open procedure was required.
Publication and transparency
Tenders subject to the act that reach the relevant thresholds are published. The central platform is simap.ch, the joint information system of the federal government and the cantons. What is published is not only the tenders themselves but also the awards made. Those award publications are an underrated source of information: over time they show which suppliers succeed with which bodies and at what magnitudes. For a company wanting to assess its chances realistically, that public record is worth more than any assumption about the market.
Legal remedies
A supplier that considers itself disadvantaged by a decision of the awarding body — an exclusion, or an award to a competitor — may appeal. The deadlines are short and stated in the appeal instructions of the decision itself; they differ by applicable regime and level. An appeal does not automatically have suspensive effect, which has considerable practical consequences. Anyone contemplating an appeal should therefore take professional advice immediately on receiving the decision rather than discussing it internally first.
What this means for suppliers in practice
Three practical consequences follow for a bidding company. First, access is formally open: every tender above the threshold is published and any qualified company may bid. Second, the procedure is formalised, which means formal errors can lead to exclusion before the substantive quality of a bid is assessed at all. Third, the process is predictable because it is structured by law — which clearly favours a company working systematically over one reacting case by case. For most suppliers the bottleneck is therefore not the law but the capacity to spot published procedures in time and work carefully through the documents.