Description
This two-day course reviews the latest court decisions and leading-edge business strategies for getting maximum value from your competitive procurement processes. Explore best practices used by Canadian organizations and enhance your own reputation for fairness, openness and transparency. We guide you through major changes in Canadian law and highlight critical areas in competitive contracting while offering innovative ways to minimize legal risks and enhance vendor relationships. Activities and discussions include relevant case studies, draft RFPs and the advantages of using web-based procurements when timelines are tight.
Topics
- RFP and tendering law, understanding Contract A and Contract B
- Duties and obligations of organization inviting competition
- Duty of fair and equal treatment
- Right to reject clauses
- Strategic use of prequalification and disqualification
- Draft RFPs, multi-stage procurements and web-based solicitations
- Running the evaluation process
- Wrestling with compliancy
- Moving to final contract
- RFPs without Contract A obligations
- The laws of copyright and confidentiality
- Freedom of information
- How to avoid personal liability
- People and relationship issues – how they affect your procurement process and contracts
Learning Objectives
- Identify legal duties and obligations of the organization inviting competition
- Identify high-risk areas in your procurement processes that may lead to expensive litigation and understand how to limit your personal and professional exposure to liabilities
- Define competitive contracting solicitation methods and when it is appropriate to use each
- Understand how to narrow the gap between the incumbent and the challengers by using draft RFPs
- Explore techniques for drafting effective mandatory and desirable evaluation criteria
- Explore the option of eliminating Contract A from your RFP process by using innovative language and identify the legal, ethical and practical implications of this new development
Expected Outcomes
Participants will leave this course fully understanding their duties and obligations as an organization inviting competition. They will learn practical skills to avoid risks in their solicitation processes, conduct a fair evaluation, and protect themselves against common issues that arise and that can derail procurement processes. Attendees will gain confidence in using prequalification, disqualification, market sounding and other procurement and contract management techniques.
Learning Methods
Pre-reading, lecture and PowerPoint presentation, facilitated discussions, case study examples, group exercises and scenario-based learning.
Complimentary Courses
- Introduction to Competitive Contracting for Buyers
- Managing and Evaluating Contract Performance
- How to Negotiate and Resolve Contract Disputes
