The open procedure is the most accessible way of awarding a public contract. The contract is published and any interested company may submit a bid without a preceding selection. Above the applicable thresholds it is generally the prescribed procedure, which is why it accounts for most of the larger published awards.
The flow
The procedure begins with publication of the tender and its documents. A question-and-answer phase usually follows, in which suppliers can raise ambiguities in the documents; the answers are made available to all suppliers, in line with the principle of equal treatment. Suppliers then submit their bids by the deadline. The awarding body first checks formal completeness and suitability, then assesses the remaining bids against the award criteria. At the end stands the award decision, which is published and notified to the suppliers.
The two stages of review
For suppliers the separation between the two stages is central, because they are different in nature. The suitability check is a yes-no decision: does the company meet the required conditions — references, evidence, technical and financial capability — or not. A firm that fails is out, regardless of how good its bid would have been. Only then follows assessment against the award criteria, where price and quality are weighed against each other. A large share of eliminated bids fails at the first stage, and usually not for want of capability but for missing or expired evidence.
How it differs from the selective procedure
The difference from the selective procedure is when selection happens. In the open procedure, all interested parties submit a bid directly. In the selective procedure there is first an application phase — pre-qualification — from which the awarding body selects the suppliers subsequently invited to bid. That has one important practical consequence: the selective procedure has an early deadline of its own, well before the bid deadline. Miss it and you cannot take part, however good your bid would have been.
The importance of the question round
Suppliers often leave the question-and-answer phase unused, although it is the only formalised instrument for removing ambiguities before costing. Unclearly worded items in a bill of quantities, contradictions between documents, or ambiguous suitability requirements can be clarified here. The precondition is finding those points early — which means working through the documents immediately after publication rather than in the week before the deadline.
Common sources of error
The most common errors in the open procedure are formal. A missing form, an unsigned document, an expired piece of evidence, a missed deadline or a submission format not observed lead to exclusion before the content is assessed. Such errors rarely arise from ignorance but from time pressure at the end of the deadline. The most effective remedy is therefore not more effort but earlier work: build the requirements list immediately after publication and at the end you only tick it off.
What the open procedure means for suppliers
The open procedure is both an opportunity and a burden. An opportunity, because access is formally available to any qualified company regardless of existing relationships with the awarding body. A burden, because the competitive field is wide and the formal effort high. It follows that choosing which procedures to enter matters more economically than perfecting the individual bid. Bidding on every fitting publication consumes capacity; selecting on the basis of your own award history deploys it more deliberately.