Compliance requirements
A bidder may be excluded if it or a person in its administrative, management or supervisory body, or a person authorised to represent, make decisions for or control it, has a relevant final conviction within the past five years for participation in a criminal organisation, corruption, fraud, terrorist offences, money laundering or terrorist financing, child labour or human trafficking. Other grounds include unpaid taxes or social security contributions; breaches of environmental, social or labour obligations; bankruptcy, insolvency, liquidation, suspended business or an arrangement with creditors; serious professional misconduct; agreements intended to distort competition; an unremediable conflict of interest; involvement in preparing the procurement where an resulting competitive advantage cannot otherwise be removed; and serious or repeated breaches of earlier contracts resulting in termination, damages, a price reduction or a penalty. Grounds also include false or misleading information, failure to provide required information or documents, or improper attempts to influence the contracting authority or obtain confidential information. National grounds include enabling the unlawful employment of foreign nationals, being subject to applicable international sanctions, convictions for tax offences, and restrictions under national law on the right to submit a tender. Where permitted, the bidder may provide evidence of measures taken to restore its reliability. Tax debts below EUR 100, or debts whose payment has been deferred, are treated as described in the notice.
Qualification criteria and exclusion grounds
The bidder’s net turnover must have been at least EUR 10,000,000 in each of the three financial years completed by the start of the procurement. Turnover figures must be provided in the ESPD. The contracting authority may request extracts from the annual accounts for those three years, unless the information for a bidder registered in Estonia is publicly available in a register.
The tender must comply with all tender-document requirements; conditional tenders are not permitted. For a joint tender, the bidders must appoint an authorised representative and submit that person’s authorisation, as well as an ESPD for each joint bidder. The completed pricing form must be included. Prices must be in euros, excluding VAT, with up to four decimal places, and must include all costs necessary to provide the services. Each unit price must exceed EUR 0 and cover the costs for the relevant item.
The bidder must submit three documents: a platform development and sustainability strategy, a conceptual system architecture, and a conceptual description of a minimum viable product. The strategy must address engagement of learners and trainers; increasing active users and encouraging continued use; cooperation with businesses, non-profit organisations, local authorities and communities; sufficient numbers and quality of trainers; and the volume, currency and quality of learning formats. It must also describe the platform’s business model and long-term operation throughout the contract, possible extension until 31 December 2029, future development, added value and innovation, indicators, and risks and mitigation measures. The strategy must support the objective of reaching at least 100,000 residents of Estonia through training.
The system architecture must describe the main components and their relationships, integrations and data flows, scalability, reliability, manageability, security, data protection, and the ability to extend the solution with new services, learning formats and artificial-intelligence-based functions. The minimum viable product description must set out the user problem and value, relevant user roles and use cases, user journeys and functional logic, the approach to implementing core functions, and the product’s relationship to the system architecture and technical feasibility. All three documents and their required content are mandatory; an incomplete document will result in rejection of the tender. Their content is assessed under the “Bidder’s vision” criterion; the evaluation methodology is in the tender documents.
The bidder must confirm that environmental requirements will be followed during service delivery: materials are generally to be provided digitally, digital files kept to an optimal size, and unnecessary drafts and working files deleted as soon as possible. If printing is necessary, products bearing a Type I ecolabel are to be preferred. This confirmation must be included with the tender.
The bidder must identify any information in the tender that it considers a trade secret and explain why. The tender price and figures corresponding to award criteria may not be designated as trade secrets. The bidder must also provide the names and personal identification codes of persons authorised to represent, make decisions for or control it who are not visible in the commercial register, or confirm that there are no such persons.
Only subcontractors and suppliers established in Estonia, another EU Member State, an EEA contracting state or a World Trade Organization member that is party to the Government Procurement Agreement may be used in performing the contract. Subcontractors and suppliers representing more than 10% of the contract value must not be Russian nationals, residents or entities established in Russia, entities more than 50% owned by them, or their representatives or persons acting on their instructions. The bidder must confirm that offered goods are not subject to international sanctions and do not originate from sanctioned regions.