Preparing to tender
If you are participating in a tender opportunity, the following pointers may be useful when when preparing your tender response:
- Read the documents carefully to make sure you’ve understood our requirements fully and are clear about what the University requires returning as part of the tender submission.
- Identify key dates such as the closing date, the closing date for questions and the date for commencement of the service or delivery dates.
- There will be an opportunity to ask questions, so you can ask us to clarify if you find parts of our requirements unclear, or you do not fully understand them.
- Allow yourself enough time to prepare a high quality response.
- Submit your best price in your tender response, as we can only make decisions on the information you submit. We rarely negotiate on price in a tender situation.
- Follow any further instructions such as word count limits and only submit the information we have requested. Additional information submitted will not be taken into account when we are evaluating your response.
- Check that you’ve submitted all the documents requested prior to the closing date and time.
How to use Delta (our online tendering portal)
The Procurement Team uses Delta e-sourcing to run the majority of its tender exercises and further competitions. The link to a particular project will be shown in the advertisement if the tender has been advertised. This is a free to use service and there is no cost to tenderers; Delta may separately offer chargeable premium services, but these are not needed to access University opportunities.
Key features of the Delta eSourcing System for suppliers include:
- Responses can be submitted at any time and the University cannot see the content of the response until after the closing date and time.
- The message function can be used to send us questions, queries and information. We can also send you information and clarifications.
- There are online help guides as well as a Delta helpdesk you can call during working hours.
- Suppliers are only required to register on Delta once to access opportunities and tenders for all public sector organisations that use Delta.
Terms and conditions
Low value orders will normally be placed on the University’s generic Terms and Conditions of Purchase
Projects which are tendered will contain separate terms and conditions that are more suited to that particular contract. The University has specific terms and conditions for supplies, services and consultancy. For works contracts the most appropriate NEC4 Form of Contract will be used.