New Zealand Government Procurement Rules changes - Supplier Debriefs

The New Zealand Government Procurement Rules are changing. The fifth edition goes live on the 1st December. While a lot of the changes are cosmetic – making the language less bureaucratic, merging rules where they were repetitious, or moving information that was in the rules into guidance, there are a few points which suppliers need to be aware of.

The very tiny change in this rule, which could easily be overlooked is in the timing. In the previous version of the Rules, the requirement was:

When a supplier asks an agency for a debrief, the agency must debrief that supplier within 30 business days of the date the contract was signed by all parties, or 30 business days of the date of the request, whichever is later. [my bold]

Now the requirement is to do the debrief on the sooner of the dates.

While this seems like a minor change, it makes a huge difference to organisations who are involved in multi-stage processes. Previously, if you were told you were not successful in the first stage of a process, you could potentially be waiting three to four months to understand why. This is a long time to learn that your answers didn’t get your point across as clearly as you thought!

Now you should at least get the information on your strengths and weaknesses before the next RFP for similar requirements comes out, and be able to make adjustments to your approach as necessary.

When you get the outcome of a procurement process, you must ASK for the debrief. I know not all agencies are good at giving debrief, or making sure they give you useful information, but if you don’t ask, then they don’t have to give them to you at all.

This is just as important if you have won the bid as if you were unsuccessful – you still need to find out why. You could have won by a country mile, or it could be just by one or two percent.

Make sure you prepare for the debrief. You have to get the reasons you weren’t successful, the strengths and weaknesses of your bid, and (if you weren’t the winner) the reasons the successful supplier won. (Note – this last point won’t be practicable if you are getting the debrief part way through a multi-stage process – there may not be a winner at this point!)

However, prepare up any other questions you want to know. For example, how many organisations bid? How well did your pricing sit within the agency’s budget? Were there areas where you were not as clear as you could have been? Were there any areas where you stood out compared to your competitors?

Also prepare feedback for the agency – were they as clear as they could have been? Were there any details which could have been helpful up front? Was the timeframe sufficient for the amount of work required to bid? Conversely – if the process was clear and well laid out, please do tell the procurement team – procurers like validation, too!

Once you have had your debrief - remember to actually make use of the information! Ensure you have the details captured so you can adjust answers or your approach for the next procurement process.

Remember – the debrief is not the place to relitigate the decision. If you genuinely feel that there have been issues in how the process was conducted (over and above “we should have won it..."), then there is a formalised complaints process outlined on the New Zealand Government Procurement website.