The Procurement Act 2023 is well and truly here, and contracting authorities are slowly starting to publish notices, with 445 published as of the 10th March. Though there have been over 100 tender notices published, the largest amount of notices published have been for preliminary market engagement (PME).
The PME does share similarities with the Prior Information Notice under PCR2015, however where the PIN could be used to reduce timescales a PME cannot, and this would fall under the remit of another Notice. PME, while optional, must be published if pre-market engagement occurs, otherwise a justification must be included in your tender notice. Again, this is a slight difference to what we are used to under the PCR2015 where this justification did not need to be provided.
There are no set time limits for pre-market engagement but this does need to be proportionate to what you are asking of the suppliers.
While the ACT doesn’t dictate how the PME can be carried out, it does set out six reasons why a contracting authority may choose to engage in preliminary market engagement including:
- develop the requirements
- design the procedure
- support in preparing tender documents
- identify suppliers
- look at contractual terms
- build capacity within suppliers
These can be found in full in chapter 2 of the Act.
If you are shortly looking to undertake any pre market engagement, make sure you refer to the guidance that has been created to ensure that you are following the PA23 not just what we’re used to under PCR2015. Most importantly, remember to start your conflict of interests from this point!
While the PME notice is available, when using Atamis make sure you are aware of the dates that the remaining notices are available from, not all are currently on there including the Award Notices and the Pipeline Notices. Updates on these dates can be found on the home page on Atamis. If you need to publish one of the remaining notices before the date it is available on Atamis you may need to publish this straight on FTS.
If you have any questions on PME notices or procurement policy and legislation, don’t hesitate to get in touch: [email protected].