How To Go About Procuring Landscaping Services Through An Open Tender

By Author: Sheila Gilman
Total Articles: 4
Comment this article

We venture to examine some of the steps that need to be followed by anyone (or any organization) keen on procuring landscaping services through an open tender. This is against a background where we keep on encountering queries from people who are actually keen on procuring the said services through the open tender system, but who don’t actually know how to go about it. This interest in procurement of services through open tenders is mainly as a result of the fact that tender-based procurement often yields very good deals. That is because the people bidding on tenders tend to know that they are up in competition against others (and that their offers will be contrasted directly with those of competitors) in the process of selecting the ‘winning bidder.’ The open tender system also raises the probability of identifying the best possible service providers: as the various bidders typically have to say something about their technical competencies as part of their bids.

So, how does one go about procuring landscaping services than open tender? Well, there are five key phases in the process, namely:
Advertisement ...
... of the tender: in order to let competent (and interested) landscapers know that you are in need of the services they offer, you have to advertise the tender. The advertisement would include a statement on the specific types of landscaping services you need, and an invitation to competent and interested landscapers to bid.

Reception of bids: chances are that some of the landscapers who will come across the advertisement of your tender will get interested, and proceed to bid on the tender. You thus need to open a tender box (where the interested landscapers can drop their proposals). You can alternatively open an email account, where interested landscapers can send their proposals. Just ensure that you don’t get to meet the landscapers at this stage: as doing so would end up creating opportunities for canvassing, which is detrimental to the whole process.

Opening of bids: once all the bids have been received (or once the ‘tender closing date’ has come), the next step will be that of opening the bids. By this time, you should have come up with a criterion for prequalification of landscapers. That is where, for instance, you make up your mind not to look twice at bids above a certain price, or bids by firms lacking certain qualifications. You can also come up with an objective criterion for selection of the winning bidder. With that in place, you just open the bids, subject them to the prequalification criterion, and then subject those which are prequalified to the final selection criterion. This should leave you with just one or two bidders to make the final choice from.

Interviews with bidders: before making the final decision on whom to work with, you may be advised to have face to face interviews with the most impressive bidders (the ones you are considering engaging). The idea here would be just to ensure that they are actually competent landscapers – and they weren’t just being rhetorical in their bids. Of course, this wouldn’t be necessary if the most impressive bidders also turn out to be firms you have worked with before, or firms whose reputation in the local market is already well-established.

Selection of winning bids: once you are through with the face-to-face interviews of the most impressive bidders, you can select the ultimate winners and engage them to be your landscaping service providers for the period of time stated in the tenders.

The author is impressed with the colorado springs sprinklers and the colorado springs irrigation agencies for their professionalism