UK Procurement Act FAQs

The new Procurement Act will benefit suppliers of all sizes, particularly start-ups, scale-ups and small businesses. It will create a central digital platform for suppliers to register and store their details so that they can be used for multiple bids, and see all opportunities in one place.

The Procurement Act 2023 increases the obligations on contracting authorities to publish notices linked to a wide range of events during the lifecycle of a procurement and the resulting contract.

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Proactis has supported the practice of strategic procurement for over 25 years, and our solutions have enabled customer's processes to efficiently comply with Public Sector requirements throughout this time. We already have the technology in place to satisfy many of the requirements of the Act. Our Sourcing, SRM, Contract Management, P2P and eInvoicing solutions enable you to control spend and manage supply-chain risk - all through process digitisation and automation.

As the first choice for contracting authorities in the UK, the Proactis digital platform encompasses many features and functions that are already in line with the requirements of The Procurement Act 2024, including:

• Flexible and configurable procedure workflow.
• Connectivity to publish notices.
• Flexible qualitative evaluation.
• Inherent supplier risk management capability.
• ESG supplier due diligence.
• Streamlined digital interaction with suppliers and stakeholders.
• Overall data visibility and transparency.

Proactis is working closely with the Cabinet Office to ensure our tools enable authorities to remain compliant with regulations, including new notice requirements.

Some of the key ways in which Proactis already supports these requirements can be found in the Our Products Section.

We are working on our solutions, in line with updates from the Cabinet Office, to ensure there is a smooth transition for you.

We are actively updating ProContract, Source-to-Contract and MyTenders solutions to enable you to meet the requirements of the regulations when our technology is combined with your processes.

A number of changes are being introduced in line with the regulations covered by the Procurement Act 2023. These include the introduction of new notice types*, changes to procurement processed and introduction of the CDP (Central Digital Portal).

Proactis is working in conjunction with the UK government in order to update its product and allow our users to be compliant with the upcoming regulations. 

*Notice types:

• UK2 Preliminary market engagement notice
• UK3 Planned procurement notice
• UK4 Tender notice
• UK5 Transparency notice
• UK6 Contract award notice
• UK7 Contract details notice
• UK10 Contract change notice
• UK11 Contract termination notice
• UK12 Procurement termination notice
• UK13-16 dynamic markets notice types

Senior leaders can support the process by encouraging:

• a named individual in their organisation to take responsibility for co-ordinating and championing the change, including within their wider organisational family where appropriate,
• early engagement by policy with commercial teams - this is key to delivering innovation and getting the most from the market,
• use of the new flexibilities in procurement and champion this change across government and wider public sector - in order for this reform to be effective, we need to drive behavioural change,
• commercial teams to take time for the learning and development when available.

The Procurement Act has the potential to make a huge difference, and your engagement is essential to the outcomes we all want to see. Make sure your organisation is ready to grasp the opportunity.

Are you prepared? 

As the first choice for contracting authorities in the UK, the Proactis digital platform encompasses many features and functions that are already in line with the requirements of The Procurement Act 2024. We are working closely with the Cabinet Office to ensure our tools enable authorities to remain compliant with regulations, including new notice requirements.

Ahead of the final details, you can access some of the key ways in which Proactis already supports these requirements here.
 

We are aware of the requirement for existing live procurements, including DPSs, to continue with existing notice types during the transition period. We intend to support this while allowing new procurement journeys that begin after 28 October to utilise the new notice forms.

Every public authority will need to be registered with CDP in order to be able to publish notices through CDP or an eSender like Proactis. The Cabinet Office will open the registration in due course and you will be required to obtain your registration number ahead of your notice publications to CDP.

In  August, we will launch a short online course to delve deeper into the UK Procurement Act and its implications for Source-to-Contract (S2C) users. This course will highlight the numerous features and functions that already comply with the Act's requirements and offer an overview of the anticipated changes for S2C users in the coming months.

We will be releasing a separate course for our Pro-Contract users shortly after.

If you have a specific requirement and would like to explore the options available to you, please discuss this with your Account Manager who will be able offer guidance.

Buying organisations will be expected to update their profile with their new organisation details for the Central Digital Platform.

Due to our attempt to minimise the risk of enhancements, and some functionality not likely to be ready in time by the Cabinet Office in time for October, we have decided to initially implement a light touch solution where suppliers upload their exports from the CDP where responding to Tenders.  Validation on the Central Digital Platform side of things will initially mostly be Optional.  This will be reviewed and we’ll discuss improvements with our customers after October.

CPD Linking
Buyers will need to register on the CDP for a Buyer Key, allowing their organisation to publish notices. Once Buyers have their Key, this can be stored within our portals, allowing for the publication of notices via ProContract, Source  to Contract & myTenders. Information about the process of Buyers registering on the CDP, will be made available from the Cabinet Office – we cannot, however, confirm when.

We are working closely with the Cabinet Office and addressing any concerns and issues as they arise in the following detail:

RISKS:
As with all big projects, there can be unexpected delays and issues. Our upcoming newsletter will highlight some our recent challenges, and how we tackled them. 

For transparency, we are in a position to share the following ongoing risks to the successful implementation of the Procurement Act 2023: 

The Cabinet Office is still developing some of the technical elements of the Central Digital Planform up until Go-Live.
Mitigation: We are aware of the gap and will ensure we respond quickly if these impact what we have developed.

We have been told that Suppliers will be able to register on the 28 October.
Accept: This is outside our control and influence. Our concerns have been raised to the Cabinet Office, but this has not resulted in changes to their plans. We have been told they are working on a Supplier communication strategy which we hope to get sight of in the next couple of weeks. We hope this will reduce risks around supplier registration, however we have limited influence over this.

We have currently no exact details on when Buyers and eSenders will be provided with, or allowed to sign up for, their registration details for Central Digital Platform.
Mitigation: We have communicated this to the Cabinet Office and continue to press for some clarity, however, as with the Supplier registration this is outside our control.

If these risks, or any other challenges, have a high probability of creating issues for our customers - we will ensure appropriate communications are issued. 

We are actively updating ProContract, introducing new functionality and features, so you can meet the requirements of the regulations when our technology is combined with your processes. Further details of the changes are available here.

A short online course is in development which will take deeper look at the UK Procurement Act and its implications for users. This course will highlight the numerous features and functions that already comply with the Act's requirements and offer an overview of the anticipated changes for users. Details of these courses are available via the Proactis Training Academy.

We are confirming our deployment schedule, UAT and final release dates.. Further details are available through our Product pages.

Our current understanding is that the CDP (Central Digital Platform) will replace the requirement for an in solution (SQ) Standard Questionnaire/ (SPD) Single Procurment Docuemnt from 28 October 2024.  As such we will be moving away from the current centralised SQ/SPD in due course.

If the CDP is required to consider the CAS questions to be mandated, then this should be queried through the Cabinet Office.

Of course, Proactis customers will still have the option to create a specific CAS questionnaire for use by their organisation themselves.

Proactis is working on supplier guides to support raising awareness of the CDP, and will make these available in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, we have provided suppliers with the following message:

The UK's Procurement Act 2023 comes into force from Monday 28 October 2024, which will introduce new processes and notice types - changing how you bid for tenders.

The UK government has prepared some useful resources about these changes:  

• 3-min summary of all changes  
• Indepth video overviews  
• Guidance documents

Further information about these changes will be made available prior to 28 October 2024.

We are actively updating myTenders, introducing new functionality and features, so you can meet the requirements of the regulations when our technology is combined with your processes. You can see more here. 

The central digital platform referenced in this guidance comprises an enhanced version of Find a Tender (FTS), providing the new procurement notices - Ref https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/procurement-act-2023-guidance-documents.

For the purpose of ProContract we will continue to publish notices to the FTS site come October but in the new 2024 "UK" format.  We intend to provide all notices from UK01 to UK17 within ProContract however as of October UK01, UK08, UK09 & UK17 will not live within the FTS site.  We recommend our customers review this site for additional information, in particular the Knolwedge drops and Learning & Development Brochure.