Prepare a preliminary list of firms to contact with the DO, including firm names and addresses, contact person names and email addresses.

After the preliminary list of firms is received from the Technical Officer, decide on the proposed list of firms to be contacted with the DO. The firms should be chosen taking into account:

- The country of origin of the supplies or services. Ensure that there is a fair distribution of countries and that firms whose services or supplies originate in PBMS and VPBMS are sought in preference to those whose services or supplies originate in WBMS where possible. For services or supplies paid by CERN, the DO shall only be sent to firms whose services or supplies originate in CERN Member States and Associate Member States, unless otherwise approved by the Head of Procurement Service (in which case the approval shall be saved in the Before Dispatch folder in Shared). Before contacting a firm whose supplies or services originate in an Associate Member State check that the annual CERN expenditure (personnel, supplies and services) on that State has not (or would not, if it was granted the future contract) exceed its annual contribution;

- The technical competency and experience of the firm.

Tips:

• Where an order is for an experiment and no CERN money is involved or it is financed by the “common fund”, approval from the Head of Procurement Service to send the DO to companies whose services or supplies do not originate in CERN Member States is not required.
• Care shall be taken to avoid sending the DO to any firms on the CERN contractor black list. The processes for blocking and unblocking firms from the CERN black list are available here and here.

If three or more firms from VPBMS are identified as potential contractors and in order to improve the industrial return for VPBMS, discuss with the Technical Officer the option to perform limited tendering in accordance with Section 10 CERN Procurement Rules.

If the Technical Officer agrees to perform limited tendering, request email approval for this procedure. Indicate in the email the scope of the DO (supply or service and expected value), the list of firms and the countries of origin.

Tip: If the use of limited tendering is approved, the email approval should be saved in the Before Dispatch folder as a record and ‘/LT’ added to the end of the DO reference.

If granted, save the email approval to perform a limited tender process in the Before Dispatch folder in Shared.