The open and simplified open procedures in Spain

In the open procedure, any interested company may submit a bid directly, with no prior selection stage. The sequence is linear: notice on the contracting profile (and in the OJEU if the contract is SARA), submission period, opening and scoring by the evaluation committee, request to the top-ranked bidder and award.

Minimum submission periods for works are 26 calendar days from publication for below-threshold contracts and 35 days from dispatch of the notice to the OJEU for SARA contracts. Documentation is organised into separate electronic envelopes: supporting documents (usually replaced by the self-declaration of the European Single Procurement Document), judgement-based criteria and automatic criteria. Opening follows that order to preserve the objectivity of the evaluation.

The ordinary open procedure admits contracts of any value and any combination of criteria. It is the default route for large works and for all SARA contracts.

The simplified open procedure of article 159 was created to speed up mid-value procurement and has become the star procedure of local public works. Its conditions of use in works contracts:

The simplifications are tangible. Documentary proof is replaced by registration in the ROLECE (Registro Oficial de Licitadores y Empresas Clasificadas, the official register of bidders and classified companies): the committee consults the register instead of requesting papers. Scoring is concentrated into one or two sessions, with automatic criteria at the centre. And the bid guarantee is excluded by law.

ROLECE registration deserves emphasis: it is an admission requirement, not a later formality. The registration application must be filed before the bid deadline expires, and an unregistered company risks exclusion. For any contractor aiming to bid regularly, registering (and keeping classification data and powers of attorney up to date) is a task to complete before any specific tender.

Within article 159, paragraph 6 regulates an even faster variant, the so-called super-simplified open procedure, for works with an estimated value below EUR 80,000: a submission period of only 10 working days, exclusively automatic criteria, no proof of standing and no performance guarantee. It is a regime designed for small municipal works and has its own bidding logic, developed in the article on the super-simplified procedure.

Between the ordinary and the simplified open procedures, the operational difference for bidders comes down to three points. All three affect the calendar and the documentary load of the bid.

The calendar. Twenty calendar days (which in August or December shrink to little more than two working weeks) demand a fast decision loop: early detection of the notice, go/no-go within 48 hours, cost study running in parallel with the technical submission.

The weight of price. With judgement-based criteria capped at 25 per cent, the simplified procedure is dominated by automatic criteria. The price scoring formula and the abnormality threshold are the heart of the analysis; the technical submission, where there is one, is short and must answer the sub-criteria surgically. Formulas are covered in the article on award criteria.

Formal risk. The speed of the procedure does not forgive defects: a badly completed bid form, an offer submitted outside the designated electronic tool, unproven registration. In the simplified procedure, most exclusions are formal, not technical.

A town council publishes on a Friday the notice for refurbishing a municipal market: EUR 1,640,000 estimated value, simplified open procedure, 20 calendar days, 75 automatic points (price and warranty extension) and 25 judgement-based (construction method statement). The real calendar of the company that wins:

Two details win the file: the alert configured by CPV code allows starting on day 1 rather than day 6, and the ROLECE check in the first week uncovers an expired power of attorney in time to renew it. The same bid prepared with late detection would have arrived with the documentation barely ready and no simulation margin.

The simplified procedure's compression shows especially in the evaluation phase. When all criteria are automatic, opening and scoring can be resolved in a single act: the committee opens, applies the formulas and issues the award proposal in the same session. When judgement-based criteria exist (capped, remember, at 25 per cent), the mechanics keep two stages (qualitative scoring first, financial opening after), but with fixed internal deadlines so the file does not stall.

For bidders, that speed has two practical consequences. First: file monitoring must be weekly, because only a few days may pass between opening and the documentation request, and the request runs on a deadline. Second: committee errors (a misapplied formula, an admitted bid that should have been excluded) are spotted by reading the minutes published on the profile, and the window to react is short. The discipline of downloading and reviewing every set of minutes on its publication day is the difference between being able to challenge and finding out too late.