Health Service Executive Ireland

Introduction

eTenders powered by Complete Tender Management (CTM) has been developed as part of the Irish Government’s Strategy for the Implementation of eProcurement in the Irish Public Sector.

eTenders CTM is designed to be a central facility for all public sector contracting authorities including Health, Defence, Education and Local Government. Displaying, on a daily basis, all Irish public sector procurement opportunities currently being advertised in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU), as well as other lower-value contracts uploaded to eTenders from over 4,500 contracting authorities.

The platform has the functionality to allow Awarding Authorities to publish notices which will then be sent to the OJEU automatically. Other functionality includes: facility for conducting online clarifications via a Q&A facility; online submission of tenders; tender opening protocols for integrity; user and notice management facilities to awarding authorities; email alerts and response management facilities to suppliers. There is also a comprehensive set of process templates to procure goods and services via Frameworks, Dynamic Purchasing System (DPS), Open & Restricted Procedures as well as Quick Quotes.

The Health Service Executive (HSE) is one of the four largest public sector contracting authorities utilising eTenders CTM.

What is your role within HSE and how long have you been using eTenders CTM?

I’m an Estate Manager within the HSE Capital & Estates division and have been with HSE for 15 years. We have a large procurement team spread across 10 offices. We use what is known as the eTenders platform provided through the Office of Public Procurement (OGP), for all of our public procurement in construction and capital works. We use the system to manage all competitions regardless of size, right down to quick quotes. We have frameworks set up, different workspaces and we use around 80% of functionality which is already there.

What is your favourite feature?

It’s great being able to have oversight of who has viewed documents, who has replied and what stage of a process they are in. Previously, we had no idea of whether someone was going to return a tender or not. Another feature would be the Q&A module functionality.

Are there any other benefits of eTenders CTM you wish to highlight?

I think being able to manage frameworks in one location has been a benefit that only became apparent after we started using it. We have 6 large frameworks which are all now managed on CTM which is a big step certain people didn’t realise you could do.

What is the single biggest reason you would recommend eTenders CTM?

It does what it’s meant to do, it’s also flexible enough to adapt to your way of working within the procurement guidelines.