Tuesday, February 7, 2012

A new review of the functioning of the Common Procurement Vocabulary CPV is on track

Although there is no mandatory frequency, a review of the Common Procurement Vocabulary (CPV) is made about every four years. Since the Official Journal of the EU has recently published the award of the contract for the review of the functioning of the CPV Regulation and codes, a new revision seems to be already on track. These process started back in August 2011, when the DG for the Internal Market and Services announced a contract notice to make a study on the review of the functioning of the coding currently applying to public tenders.

The Common Procurement Vocabulary published by Regulation (EC) 2195/2002 aims to provide public authorities with a common base to formulate their procurement needs and for companies to better identify business opportunities in public procurement procedures. Choosing the right codes according to the purpose of a contract notices is, indeed, one of the key elements to match both parts of the procurement process: the contracting authority and the potential bidders.

CPV codes contribute to define the object of the contract in public procurement notices, easing the purchasing process. Furthermore, this common coding system enhances the cross-border element in procurement by facilitating companies to bid for contracts in other Member states, therefore contributing to a better functioning of the EU Single Market.

The Danish company to whom the contract has been awarded will have to assess whether the current CPV coding system meets the objectives it was established for. It will also have to evaluate if these objectives are actually relevant and if they are achieved in an efficient and effective manner. The contractor will have a period of twelve months to deliver the works, while interviews, analysis, questionnaires and all the necessary evaluation processes will be performed.

Whatever the results of the study and the proposed changes to the CPV will be, Euroalert.net will be vigilant and will adapt all the services just as it was done for the 2008 CPV codes review. These commercial intelligence services based on public procurement designed for SMEs are those which allow, e.g., to track the publication of this particular tender for the review of the CPV, and to know afterwards which company has won the contract.

By the way, if you feel curious, these are the CPV codes applied to the tender for the CPV review: 79313000, 79419000, 72330000, 79330000, 72221000. Do you think they meet their objectives? If you want to know which services they describe and know a bit more about the system itself, you can always have a look at the CPV codes lists description page at Euroalert.net website.

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