If the Contract involves work to be carried out on the CERN site, or if required by the complexity of the procurement, optionally hold a bidders’ conference one or two weeks after the release date of the DO. At the bidders’ conference:
-    the Technical Officer shall present the technical specification;
-    the Procurement Officer shall present the adjudication rules (if applicable), the 4P (if applicable) and the commercial requirements;
-    firms shall be allowed to ask questions about the DO.

Warning: If a bidders’ conference is held, attendance is mandatory for all firms intending to submit a bid. Failure by a firm to attend the full bidders’ conference will result in the firm being disqualified from the DO.

If a bidders’ conference will be held, organize the logistics of the day including food and coffee, room bookings, buses and transfers, if any, etc.

Tip: Ask advice and support from the department’s secretaries, as they are often used to organising conferences. 
For videoconferencing with specific requirements, ask support from CERN’s IT CDA group. 

If technical questions are received from bidders while the DO is open either during a bidders’ conference or otherwise, write up the questions and answers in a Q&A document based on the template provided by the Procurement Service.

Tip: Contractors shall submit questions no later than one week before the submission date of the DO. CERN has no obligation to respond to questions received after this point.

If commercial questions are received from bidders while the DO is open either during a bidders’ conference or otherwise, write up the questions and responses in a Q&A document.

Verify that the Q&A document containing technical and/or commercial questions is accurately and correctly drafted.

Tips: 
-    Effort should be made to group questions into a single Q&A document to minimise the number of clarifications being sent to bidders;
-    Consideration should be given as to whether an extension of time should be granted in light of clarifications or new information provided, especially if the DO response date is within one week.
 

Upload clarification documents to the eTendering interface (CDS) and inform all bidders via email.

Upload the bid on the eTendering interface (CDS).