Compliance requirements
The exclusion grounds include at least participation in a criminal organisation, corruption and fraud. The bidder must confirm that neither it nor its management, administrative or supervisory body members, nor other persons with authority to represent it, have been finally convicted of these offences within the last five years, or that the exclusion period no longer applies. If an exclusion ground exists, the bidder may submit evidence of self-cleaning, i.e. measures taken to restore reliability. The contracting authority also asks for details of authorised persons not visible from the business register so that it can check the exclusion grounds. The machine-readable notice did not include any other precise exclusion grounds; these must be checked in the tender documents.
Qualification criteria and exclusion grounds
The bidder must be entered in the business register of its country of establishment, if required by that country’s law. For an Estonian bidder, this means registration in the business register. As a financial and economic capacity requirement, the bidder’s average net turnover for the last financial years ended by the time the last three procurement procedures were launched must be at least EUR 60,000 per financial year for the period 01/01/2023–31/12/2025. Joint bidders may combine turnover figures. The successful bidder must submit extracts from the reports of the last three completed financial years showing net turnover, unless these data are publicly and freely available to the contracting authority. The team must include at least a project manager and an impact evaluation expert. The project manager must have higher education in economics, public administration, social sciences, agriculture or a related field, and experience leading at least three public-sector commissioned impact analyses or programme evaluations in the last 60 months; each assignment must have had a value of at least EUR 15,000 excluding VAT. The impact evaluation expert must have higher education, experience with both qualitative and quantitative impact analysis methods, and experience in quantitative impact evaluation in at least two public-sector commissioned impact analyses or programme evaluations in the last 60 months. In addition, the team must have sector-specific expertise in the agricultural advisory system and experience conducting at least 50 interviews and at least 3 focus groups. The tender must be submitted in the structure required by the procurement documents, and the team presentation plus copies of the project manager’s and impact evaluation expert’s education certificates and CVs must be provided. The tender must comply with all requirements set out in the procurement documents, and where equivalence is used it must be explained and evidence attached. The machine-readable notice did not include any other precise qualification or compliance requirements; these must be checked in the tender documents.