As part of your application, we need to know all costs associated with your project, particularly if it includes any construction. In order to obtain some estimated costs, you will need to engage with qualified suppliers using an appropriate procurement process.
Where you are engaging consulting professionals, contractors or suppliers to help develop your idea and costs into a formal proposal you must use an appropriate procurement process that is compliant with your organisation's procurement policy or accepted good practice in the public / charity sector.
The process should be transparent and fair in order to select a qualified and competitive company to support your project. You will need to adhere to any publicly funded legal requirements in advance of your application.
For Your Fund Surrey, part of Surrey County Council, we expect to see the following:
- Suppliers should have a background and recent relevant experience in the type of work that you are tendering
- Depending on the value of the work, a minimum number of tenders should be sought or a competitive tender exercise undertaken
- A tender process should include quality criteria for the selection of the preferred supplier, and not be based solely on cost and this should be clearly stated to all suppliers at the outset in the project/works brief, e.g. method statements, delivery schedule, health and safety performance, environmental performance
- You may consider employing the services of a consultant to help you in this process
- Any changes to your brief must be communicated to all tendering companies
- Formal quotes should be sought including the VAT registration number of the company, full contact details including website where appropriate, phone number, the validity of the quote and the terms and conditions.
Your Fund Surrey encourages the use of local suppliers where possible.
We expect you to complete this procurement process before we can make a grant award. However, we recognise that under some circumstances it can be difficult to achieve three quotes or tenders. Talk to your Project Advisor if this is a concern for you.
We require:
- For all works <£9,999 – at least one written quote
- For all works £10,000 - £99,999 – at least 3 written quotes
- For all works >£100,000 you should undertake a competitive tender process to arrive at the costs for your project.
For works >£100,000, we require a report as part of your application including the following:
- procurement method undertaken (e.g., quotes, competitive tender)
- if applicable, include details of the appropriate form of contract to be used
- if applicable, include a copy of the brief used for the tender
- number of bids received
- lowest and highest bid received
- evaluation criteria used to evaluate bids (to show transparency and fairness in the process used, include quality criteria not just cost)
- name of preferred supplier and price, indicating if this bid was the lowest. If you decide not to accept the lowest quote or tender received, we will need to understand why.
- details of due diligence undertaken on the preferred supplier
We reserve the right to fully audit the procurement process and request references for suppliers.
