Procurement procedures: overview

The system rests on two ordinary procedures of free use, the open and the restricted, plus a series of extraordinary procedures whose use requires justification: the negotiated procedure, competitive dialogue and the innovation partnership. To these is added the contrato menor (minor contract), which is not strictly a tendering procedure but a direct award based on low value.

In public works practice, the vast majority of tenders run through the procedimiento abierto (open procedure) or its simplified variant under article 159 of the LCSP. The open procedure guarantees maximum competition: any company meeting the required qualification may bid directly. The simplified version, available for works up to 2,000,000 euros, compresses deadlines and lightens documentation, with registration in the ROLECE (the official register of bidders) as the entry key. Within it, the super-simplified procedure of article 159.6 takes streamlining to the extreme for the smallest works.

The rules of both, their deadlines and their operational differences are developed in the article on the open and simplified open procedure, and the super-simplified variant has its own analysis in the article on the super-simplified procedure. The two articles are read together, since the choice of variant changes the calendar.

The restricted procedure introduces a selection phase: only candidates invited after proving their qualification submit bids. It is rare in ordinary works but appears in projects where the administration wants to limit the number of bids to evaluate or to demand very specific capabilities.

The negotiated procedure allows the contract conditions to be discussed with invited firms, but only in the cases exhaustively listed by the act (without publicity, essentially when a previous tender has attracted no valid bids, in cases of extreme urgency or of technical exclusivity). Competitive dialogue is reserved for contracts whose technical or legal solution cannot be defined in advance: the administration works through it with candidates and then requests final bids.

These three routes, their permitted uses and their litigation risks are analysed in the article on the restricted, negotiated and competitive dialogue procedures. Their use is restricted and an improper choice is a frequent ground for challenge.

Since the LCSP entered into force, electronic processing has been the general rule. Notices are published on the contracting authority's profile hosted on the Plataforma de Contratación del Sector Público (Spain's public procurement platform, or the equivalent regional platforms), bids are submitted electronically and notifications circulate online. For bidders, mastering the platform is not optional: electronic submission errors (a file uploaded after the deadline, an invalid signature, a wrongly completed envelope) are a recurring cause of exclusion. The practical workings are detailed in the article on the procurement platform and electronic tendering.

The procedure also determines how much time bidders have to prepare their offer, a factor to weigh before deciding to compete. The LCSP sets minimum submission periods that tender documents may extend but never shorten:

In practice, many contracting authorities publish with the minimum period, so a works bid backed by a serious cost study is almost always prepared against the clock. Spotting the tender on the day it is published, rather than days later, is a real competitive advantage.

Faced with a notice, the efficient reading order is always the same: procedure and submission deadline; base budget and estimated value; required qualification or classification; award criteria and their weighting. Those four keys allow a company to decide within minutes whether the tender justifies the effort of preparing a bid, a decision best taken early because simplified-procedure deadlines are short and the documentation, though lighter, requires coordination.