Compliance requirements
The tender documents include mandatory exclusion grounds. The bidder must confirm that neither the company nor its managers, legal representatives or supervisory body members have been finally convicted in the last five years for participation in a criminal organisation, corruption, fraud, terrorist offences, money laundering, child labour or human trafficking, or other similar exclusion grounds listed in the tender documents. If an exclusion ground applies, the bidder may have to provide evidence of self-cleaning where allowed. The machine-readable notice did not include the full list of exclusion grounds, so the exact grounds must be checked in the tender documents.
Qualification criteria and exclusion grounds
The bidder must submit a free-form service description. It must cover at least the assessment context, purpose and scope, tasks and expected outputs, the approach, data collection and analysis methods, limitations and risks, the process for reaching conclusions and quality control, reporting, schedule, work organisation, team division of responsibilities, project management, and where relevant proposals for added value, a preliminary choice of countries for international best-practice comparison, and the use of artificial intelligence.
The bidder must assemble an expert team of at least four members, including a team leader and assessment experts. A list of the team members and their responsibilities must be provided. The team members must not be involved in the implementation of external funds for the 2021–2027 period or in planning for 2028–2034; this must be confirmed in writing in the CVs.
The team leader must have managed at least two similar services within the last 72 months from the start of the procurement. Similar services are assessments, analyses or studies of the relevance, effectiveness, performance, impact or sustainability of measures, implementation plans, development plans, programmes, policy areas, or the implementation of different funding sources and funds. Pre-assessment-type analyses, including analyses of financial instruments, also qualify. Project evaluation in the sense of project selection and project audits are not considered equivalent experience.
If the bidder uses specialists employed by other employers, their consent is required. If an expert has to be replaced, the replacement must meet the same qualification requirements. The bid must clearly distinguish which members are subject to compliance assessment and which are additional team members.
When submitting the tender, the bidder must confirm that the tender complies with the tender documents. In the case of a joint tender, a power of attorney from the joint bidders must be attached. The bidder must also name any authorised persons who are not visible in the business register, or confirm that there are no such persons. The machine-readable notice did not include precise qualification or compliance requirements, so they must be checked in the tender documents.
The machine-readable notice did not include precise exclusion grounds beyond the listed criminal-organisation and corruption grounds, so the full list must be checked in the tender documents.
The bidder must confirm that neither the company nor its management, representation or supervisory body members have been finally convicted within the last five years for participation in a criminal organisation or corruption. If an exclusion ground applies, the bidder may in some cases provide evidence of self-cleaning. The full list of exclusion grounds was not visible in the machine-readable notice, so the remaining grounds must be checked in the tender documents.