Documentation

Information on bids submitted as part of a contracting process is important for many forms of analysis, including:

  • Market analysis for understanding the competitiveness of a given marketplace;
  • Red flag analysis for understanding potential corruption risks; and
  • Value for money analysis;

Regulatory regimes vary on the extent to which they allow information on bidding to be proactively published, and at what point in the procurement process. In some systems and processes, a list of invited bidders is published at the start of tendering, and full details and documents on the bids received are disclosed when evaluation is complete. In other systems, only summary statistics on the number of bids received is made public.

The OCDS bid extension introduces a new, flexible, top-level section to each contracting process to capture bidding information. Implementers will need to assess which fields are applicable to their local regulatory regime, and to local use-cases.

This extension can also be used to publish data on quotes.

Schema

The bids.details array is used to provide one or more Bid objects, each representing a unique bid received.

The bids.statistics array is used to represent key statistical information about the number of bids and bidders. Each entry in the array is a Statistic object containing at least:

  • An identifier
  • A measure, from the statistic.csv codelist
  • A value for that measure

The statistic.csv codelist is an open codelist. Publishers can add their own codes to this list. When doing so, publishers are encouraged to engage with the open contracting community to agree upon definitions of each code.

For example, publishers may wish to add statistics on minority or women-owned businesses, or bids that meet certain environmental standards and targets.

The codelist's Category column indicates whether the statistic applies to bids or bidders or whether it is specified or required by a particular regulatory context (e.g. EU).

Guidance

Correcting a bid's value

Buyers and procuring entities – and, in some jurisdictions, bidders – can correct a bid's value after the bid is submitted: for example, to correct an arithmetical error or a misplaced decimal mark.

In OCDS, the bid's value is disclosed via the bids.details.value field. If a bid's value is corrected, the value of the bids.details.value field is overwritten. As such, the originally submitted value is only available via the contracting process' change history.

As a publisher, to make both the original and corrected values available to users, publish at least two releases for the contracting process: one release containing the bid's originally submitted value and another containing its corrected value.

Example

Below is an example of a bids extension:

{
  "bids": {
    "statistics": [
      {
        "id": "1",
        "measure": "validBids",
        "value": 1,
        "date": "2016-12-09T01:00:00+01:00",
        "notes": "This statistic covers the total number of unique bids received that were considered valid against relevant criteria."
      },
      {
        "id": "2",
        "measure": "highestValidBidValue",
        "value": 1000,
        "valueGross": 1200,
        "currency": "USD"
      },
      {
        "id": "3",
        "measure": "lowestValidBidValue",
        "value": 1000,
        "valueGross": 1200,
        "currency": "USD"
      }
    ],
    "details": [
      {
        "id": "1",
        "date": "2016-12-09T01:00:00+01:00",
        "status": "valid",
        "items": [
          {
            "id": "1",
            "description": "Installation and operation of the Shared Public Telecommunications Network",
            "classification": {
              "scheme": "CPV",
              "id": "32412100",
              "description": "Telecommunications network",
              "uri": "http://purl.org/cpv/2008/code-32412100"
            },
            "quantity": 1
          }
        ],
        "value": {
          "amount": 1000,
          "currency": "USD"
        },
        "tenderers": [
          {
            "id": "MEGA",
            "name": "Mega Consortium"
          }
        ]
      },
      {
        "id": "2",
        "date": "2016-12-10T01:00:00+01:00",
        "status": "disqualified",
        "value": {
          "amount": 1500,
          "currency": "USD"
        },
        "tenderers": [
          {
            "id": "BETA",
            "name": "Beta Consortium"
          }
        ]
      }
    ]
  },
  "awards": [
    {
      "id": "111",
      "title": "Example PPP contract award",
      "description": "Award of Example PPP contract to Mega Consortium",
      "status": "active",
      "date": "2016-12-17T10:00:00-06:00",
      "relatedBids": [
        "1"
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Issues

Report issues for this extension in the ocds-extensions repository, putting the extension's name in the issue's title.

Changelog

Unreleased

  • Add Award.relatedBids field, and deprecate Award.relatedBid field
  • Add BidsStatistic.valueGross field
  • Add Bid.items field
  • Add Bid.validityPeriod field
  • Add Bid.description field
  • Move Bid.relatedLots from the Lots extension
  • Add guidance on correcting bid values
  • Rename BidStatistic object to Statistic and remove bid specific language from object field descriptions
  • Rename bidStatistics.csv to statistic.csv

v1.1.5

  • Add BidsStatistic.currency field
  • Add 'lowestValidBidValue' and 'highestValidBidValue' codes to bidStatistics.csv
  • Remove type information from field descriptions
  • Review normative and non-normative words

v1.1.4

  • Fix the title and description of the 'foreignBidsFromEU' code to refer to the European Economic Area (EEA). Previously, its title referred to the European Single Market, but its description listed the members of the EEA.
  • Add a 'foreignBidsFromNonEU' code to bidStatistics.csv
  • Remove invalid required property on array field Bids.details
  • Fix the merge behavior of Bids.statistics and Bid.tenderers to use identifier merge strategy
  • Remove Sphinx directives from readme
  • Update extension.json for Extension Explorer

v1.1.3

  • Disallow required fields BidsStatistic.id, BidsStatistic.measure, BidsStatistic.value from being null
  • Disallow Bids.statistics from having null in its array of objects
  • Allow Bids.statistics to be null
  • Add enum to Bid.status
  • Move BidsStatistic.requirementResponses to requirements extension
  • Add descriptions to bidStatus.csv
  • List codelists in extension.json
  • Add example to documentation
  • Add tests and tidy code