8.6 Procurement

Procurement policies

University policy for procurement of non-pay expenditure and policies for compliance with legal obligations on major procurement exercises. Information in this Category currently includes:

Information regarding our Procurement policies can be found Procurement pages.

Our Sustainable Procurement Policy can be viewed here.

Additional information about purchasing can also be found in our Financial Regulations.

Procurement procedures

Procurement and purchasing manuals can be found on our Procurement pages.

Procurement Contacts

Contact information for procurement and purchasing information. Information in this Category currently includes:

Details of administrative and commodity-specific contacts within Procurement Services.

Terms and Conditions of Trading

All goods and services are contracted for using the University's standard Terms and Conditions of Trade. Works contracts are governed by Heriot-Watt University's bespoke Letters of Appointment (professional services); or under project-specific terms (construction and renovation). Where call-offs or further competitions are made using other contracting entities' agreements (e.g. Government Procurement Service; APUC Limited) then the terms and conditions of those agreements will apply.

Tender documentation

EU-prescribed call for competition contract notices, invitations to tender and pre-qualification questionnaire documentation for significant procurements. Information in this Category currently includes:

Information which the University is required to publish in the EU Journal.
Invitations to tender and pre-qualification questionnaire documentation, and information about potential significant procurement exercises.

Please also see Procurement Contracts section above.

Suppliers Contracts

EU-prescribed award notices of major contracts over EU thresholds. Information in this Category currently includes:

Goods and services covered by the contract, names of suppliers, period of contract (including extension options), approximate value of contract, expected date for re-tendering for the contract
A daily updated online edition is available in the TED eNotices2 database.

Access to TED is free of charge. In addition to current tenders, the TED database gives access to the archives for the past five years in English. In addition, all Heriot-Watt tendering opportunities, both above and below EU thresholds and in compliance with the Telaustria ruling are advertised on the Public Contracts Scotland portal.

Additional guidance

Any purchase over £50,000 will be advertised on Public Contracts Scotland (PCS) or Public Contracts Scotland – Tender (PCS-T) portals.  Any purchase under £50,000 is subject to competitive quotes wherever possible, which may appear on PCS and/or PCS-T.

"Public Contracts Scotland and PCS-T are the national advertising websites for Scottish publicly-funded organisations to post Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) level tendering opportunities (contracts over the European Directive thresholds) and lower value contracts commonly known as sub-OJEU or ‘slice’ contracts, and notify subsequent awards."

Anything above the EU Procurement thresholds is also automatically advertised in the official Journal of the European Union supplement, and the EU's public procurement portal, Tenders Electronic Daily