What are the bidding methods?

At present, the relevant procurement laws and regulations of various countries and relevant international organizations stipulate three bidding methods: open bidding, invitation bidding and negotiation bidding.

open tendering

Open bidding, also known as competitive bidding, refers to the bidding method in which the tenderer publishes a tender announcement in newspapers, electronic networks or other media to attract many enterprises to participate in bidding competition, and the tenderer selects the winning bidder from it. According to the degree of competition, public bidding can be divided into international competitive bidding and domestic competitive bidding.

(1) International competitive bidding

This is a worldwide bidding, and all qualified bidders at home and abroad can bid. It is required to make a complete English tender and issue a tender announcement through various publicity media internationally. For example, the World Bank has stipulated three principles for the procurement of goods and projects for loan projects: we must pay attention to saving funds and improving efficiency, that is, being economical and effective; It is necessary to provide equal competition opportunities for all member countries of the World Bank and not discriminate against bidders; It is conducive to promoting the development of construction and manufacturing industries in borrowing countries. It is from these three principles that the World Bank determines the project procurement method, among which international competitive bidding is the most widely used and the purchase amount is the largest. Its characteristics are high efficiency, economy and fairness, especially the large amount of procurement contracts, and international competitive bidding must be adopted for goods projects that are of interest to foreign bidders. According to the situation of different regions and countries, the World Bank stipulates that all goods and engineering contracts with a purchase amount above a certain limit must adopt international competitive bidding. For ordinary borrowing countries, international competitive bidding should be adopted for goods procurement contracts and large and medium-sized engineering procurement contracts with more than $6.5438+0.025 million. Generally speaking, the amount of loan projects in China is relatively large, and the World Bank's international competitive bidding quota for China has also been relaxed. All purchases of industrial projects exceeding US$ 654.38 million shall be conducted through international competitive bidding.

Practice has proved that although the international bidding procedure is complicated, it does have many benefits. First of all, due to the fierce competition in bidding, the required equipment and projects can generally be purchased at a price favorable to the buyer. Secondly, advanced equipment, technology, engineering technology and management experience can be introduced. Third, it can be guaranteed that all qualified bidders have the opportunity to participate in the bidding. Due to the objective measurement standards of goods, equipment and engineering in international competitive bidding, manufacturers and contractors in developing countries can be promoted to improve the quality of products and engineering construction and enhance their international competitiveness. Fourth, ensure that the procurement work is carried out openly and objectively in accordance with pre-defined and well-known procedures and standards, thus reducing the possibility of procurement cheating.

Of course, international competitive bidding also has some shortcomings, mainly: (1) international competitive bidding needs a lot of time. International competitive bidding has a set of elaborate and complicated procedures, from tender announcement, bidder's response, bid evaluation to contract award, which generally takes half a year to more than one year. (2) There are many documents to be prepared for international competitive bidding. The tender documents shall clearly specify various technical specifications, bid evaluation criteria and obligations of the buyer and the seller. Any ambiguity in the bidding documents may lead to differences and even disputes over the implementation of the contract. In addition, a large number of documents must be translated into the international common language, which increases the workload. (3) Among the successful suppliers and contractors, the share of developing countries is very small. International competitive bidding accounts for about 60% of the world bank's total loans for procurement, of which the bidding of developed countries such as the United States, Germany and Japan accounts for about 80%.

(2) Domestic competitive bidding

For domestic bidding, you can write the tender in your own language, advertise in the domestic media only, sell the tender publicly, and open the bid. It is usually used for procurement with small contract amount (generally less than 500,000 US dollars stipulated by the World Bank), scattered procurement varieties, long batch delivery time, labor-intensive, low commodity cost, high freight rate and local price obviously lower than the international market. In addition, if you purchase goods or engineering buildings from China, you can save a lot of time, and this convenience is of great significance to the implementation of the project, or you can only conduct competitive bidding in China. In the case of domestic competitive bidding, if foreign companies are willing to participate, they should be allowed to participate in the bidding according to domestic competitive bidding, and there should be no artificial obstacles to prevent them from participating in the competition fairly. The procedure of domestic competitive bidding is basically the same as that of international competitive bidding. Because domestic competitive bidding limits the scope of competition, foreign suppliers are usually unable to obtain information about bidding, which is inconsistent with the bidding principle, so relevant international organizations restrict domestic competitive bidding.

seek tenders

Also known as limited competitive bidding or selective bidding, that is, the bidding unit selects a certain number of enterprises and sends them invitation letters to invite them to participate in bidding competition. Generally, it is more appropriate to choose between 365438 and 00, depending on the scale of the specific bidding project. Because the invited bidders are limited, it can not only save the bidding cost, but also improve the probability of winning the bid for each bidder. However, due to the limitation of full competition, bidding laws and regulations generally stipulate that bidders should try their best to adopt open bidding.

The characteristics of inviting tenders are: (1) inviting tenders do not use announcements; (2) The unit that accepts the invitation is a qualified bidder; (3) The number of bidders is limited.

Compared with public bidding, inviting bidding is very necessary for purchasing goods with large price fluctuations, because only a small number of bidding documents are sent without issuing a bidding announcement, which greatly shortens the validity period of bidding and can reduce the bidding risk and bidding price. Fishing powder, for example, is the most typical example of adopting international limited bidding. Only a few countries in the world produce it. If international competitive bidding is adopted, it will lead to the result that no one will bid after bid opening. This situation does exist in practical business. Many commodities are often invited to bid after international bidding, which will affect the bidding efficiency. For example, in the EU's public procurement rules, if the purchase amount exceeds the legal limit and bidding is necessary, the project legal person has the right to freely choose public bidding or invitation bidding, and because of the above advantages, invitation bidding is widely used in EU member States.

Evaluation bid

Bidding negotiation is also called negotiation bidding or restricted bidding, that is, the winning bidder is determined through negotiation. There are mainly the following ways: (1) directly invite bid negotiation. The winning bidder is not selected by public or invitation to bid, but directly invited by the tenderer or his agent to negotiate separately and sign a purchase contract after reaching an agreement. If the negotiation with one company fails, another company can be invited until an agreement is reached; (2) Price negotiation method. "Price comparison" is a bidding method with the characteristics of invitation bidding and negotiation, which is generally used for small-scale and simple items and goods procurement. The usual practice is for the tenderee to send the relevant procurement requirements to the selected enterprises and ask them to make quotations at a specified time. After analysis and comparison, the tenderer selects the enterprise with reasonable quotation, negotiates the details such as time limit for a project, expenses and quality payment terms, reaches an agreement and signs the contract. (3) Scheme competition negotiation method. It is a common way to choose engineering planning and design tasks. Usually the organization is open, and pre-selected planning and design institutions can also be invited to participate in the competition. The general practice is that the tenderer puts forward the basic requirements of planning and design and the investment control quota, and provides the feasibility study report or design task book, general plan, explanation of site conditions and environmental conditions, and relevant regulations of the planning and design management department. The participating units put forward their own preliminary plans for planning or design, expound the advantages and disadvantages of the plans, and put forward the main staffing of the planning or design tasks, the time and progress of completing the tasks, and the estimation of the total design investment, etc. And submit them together. Then, the tenderer invites the selection committee composed of relevant experts to select the winning bidder, and the tenderer signs a contract with the winning bidder. Give some compensation to the unsuccessful participating units.

In addition, in science and technology bidding, public bidding but unfair bidding is usually adopted. After receiving the bids from all bidders, the tenderee first adjusts the technology, design, processing and credit ability, and on the basis of preliminary approval, selects an ideal pre-winning unit and negotiates with it to adjust the bid. If a consensus can be reached, it can be designated as an award-winning unit. If not, find the second pre-winning unit. Do this one by one until both sides reach an agreement. This way of bidding negotiation gives bidders greater flexibility and can choose ideal suppliers and contractors.

Because the winning bidder is produced through negotiation, which is not convenient for public supervision and easy to lead to illegal transactions, this method is prohibited in the bidding regulations of mechanical and electrical equipment in China. Even if negotiation is allowed, it is mostly strictly restricted. The UNCITRAL Model Law on Procurement of Goods, Construction and Services stipulates that, with the approval of the enacting State, a tenderer may conduct procurement through negotiation under the following circumstances: (1) Goods, construction or services are in urgent need, and it is impractical to adopt the bidding procedure, but the circumstances that cause this urgency are not foreseeable by the procuring entity, nor are they caused by the delay of the procuring entity; (2) Due to catastrophic events, the goods, projects or services are urgently needed, and it is not feasible to adopt other methods because it takes too long. In order to embody the principle of fairness and justice in bidding negotiation as much as possible, the UNCITRAL Model Law on Procurement of Goods, Construction and Services also stipulates that in the process of bidding negotiation, the tenderee should negotiate with a sufficient number of suppliers or contractors to ensure effective competition. If invited quotations are adopted, there should be at least three; Any regulations, guidelines, documents, clarifications or other information related to negotiations sent by the bidder to suppliers and contractors shall be sent to all other suppliers or contractors negotiating with the bidder on an equal basis; Negotiations between the tenderee and suppliers or contractors shall be kept confidential, and neither party to the negotiations shall disclose any technical data, prices or other market information related to the negotiations to anyone else without the consent of the other party.