Sell2Wales is the national advertising portal where Welsh public sector organisations post their contract opportunities. Both public Notices and invitation-only Notices (Quick Quotes) are issued by Buyers through the website.
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All Welsh public sector organisations are actively encouraged to use the website as their main tool for advertising contract notices.
Prime contractors on public contracts are encouraged to use the website to publish their sub-contract opportunities.
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No. Sell2Wales is provided by the Welsh Government and is free to use for both Buyers and Suppliers.
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No, Suppliers from any member state of the World Trade Organisation can register on the website.
The following link provides a list of countries in the World Trade Organisation: http://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/tif_e/org6_e.htm
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Sell2Wales does not currently have the capability to provide in depth business analysis or financial probity check information.
The system does however validate the email addresses of Suppliers on behalf of Buyers.
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Users of Sell2Wales should contact the Website Support Desk. Please either use the telephone number or the ‘Contact Us’ option at the top of the screen.
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Categories are used by Buyers to classify each Notice. This filters all published Notices for both the Email Alerts facility and for the 'Search Contracts' facility.
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Please see the link from the Info Centre tab > Thresholds.
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Information published on Sell2Wales is accessible to all. This means that anyone can access the website and browse and print off details of the notice.
A person must be registered on the website and record their interest in the relevant Notice to be able to access documents attached to that Notice.
Buyers should therefore encourage their Suppliers to register to the website.
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Quick Quote is an online request for quotation facility. It is used to obtain quotes for low value/low risk procurement exercises or run mini competitions within a framework agreement.
Only the individual Supplier account selected to quote can access the details of the quote and submit a response. This means that a Supplier must log in with the same email address that was invited; a colleague's details will not work.
Once registered on Sell2Wales, any Supplier can be invited to quote by a Buyer. To enhance a Supplier’s chances of being invited to quote you can complete your 'Supplier Finder' profile. Please see the relevant user guide: Help & Resources > User Guides: http://www.sell2wales.gov.uk/sitehelp/help_guides.aspx
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The Supplier Finder profile is a facility which acts as a business card on the website for suppliers. Suppliers can fill in their company details, using the key word feature to describe their business or service.
Buyers can search by these key words to find Suppliers carrying out the service or work they wish to invite to quotes.
To use the Supplier Finder please see the 'Supplier Finder' guide from the 'Help & Resources' section: http://www.sell2wales.gov.uk/sitehelp/help_guides.aspx
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Common Procurement Vocabulary (CPV) category codes are used to classify Notices when they are to be placed in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU).
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N.B. this answer only applies to Notices where the Buyer has activated the Q&A function at time of creating the notice.
For Buyer, these can be viewed indefinitely via the link for Q&A accessed via the Buyers Published Notice List, Buyers Control Panel > Notices Buyers Published Notices.
For Supplier, Q&As are only accessible to those Suppliers who have recorded an interest in the Notice. Question & Answers can be found in the Q&A tab of your Notice, if provided.
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Notices are not removed from the website.
Notices are always visible to Suppliers but after certain points, Notices are marked as Archived. Documents are not available to new Suppliers after a Notice's closing date. If you are looking for any Notice which may be Expired/Archived in the 'Search Contracts' facility, please tick the box beside 'Include Archived Contracts?'.
Similarly under the Buyers Published Notice List the Authorities notices will always be in date order of publication, with their attached documents and any Postbox submissions also available.
Contract Notices are archived 30 days after their closing date.
Prior Information Notices/Speculative Notices (PIN's) are marked as 'Current' for a year
Award Notices are archived 30 days after they are published.
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If you no longer want to be registered on Sell2Wales please use the 'Contact Us' facility at the top of the page to request that your account is expired.
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If you no longer want to receive Newsletters from Sell2Wales please update your preferences through 'Subscriptions' under the 'My Account' heading on your control panel (found through 'My Account' on the menu bar).
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Access levels are allocated to a Buyer User by your Buying Organisation's Controller/s, depending on the role you are performing within your Organisation. Please contact your Organisation Controller/s if you believe that you do not have the necessary access levels.
Buyer User: has read-only access to Buyers’ areas of the site.
Editor: can create and edit OJEU/sub-OJEU (site) notices but requires an OJEU Publisher/Publisher to sign these off for publication.
Publisher: can publish sub-OJEU (site) notices.
Controller: oversees the administration of Buyer details, access levels, notices and Buyer profile.
OJEU Publisher: can publish OJEU notices.
Postbox Opener: ability to be selected to unlock the postbox for OJEU/sub-OJEU (site) notices.
Reporter: can access and generate statistical reports.
Quick Quote Editor: can create and edit Quick Quotes but requires a Quick Quote Publisher to sign these off for distribution.
Quick Quote Publisher: can publish Quick Quotes.
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Click on the 'Free Registration' at the top of the page, then Select 'Register as a Buyer' and find your organisation using the 'Search for an existing buyer organisation' box.
- If you locate your Buying Organisation, click on its name and fill out the form on the following page. An email is sent to your Buying Organisation Controllers so that they can assign you access.
- If you cannot locate your Buying Organisation, use the 'Enter a new buying organisation' box to register a new Buying Organisation. On the following page, please fill out the form and 'Submit'. An email is sent to the Support Desk to start the process of creating a new Buying Organisation on the website.
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All Notices submitted through Sell2Wales before 4pm on Monday to Friday will be processed on the same day unless clarifications or changes are required from the Buyer. After the website support team have reviewed your Notice it will be dispatched for publication.
Site Notices will appear on the website directly. Please note that OJEU Notices are held from national publication for 48 hours - in accordance with OJEU requirements (this does not affect your timescales).
OJEU Notices should be published on the OJEU within 5 working days of dispatch. When your OJEU Notice is published you will receive email confirmation with the OJEU reference number.
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The overall limit is 100MB per Notice, individual file size limit is also 100MB.
N.B. Supplier responses are limited to 30MB in total and 10MB per file. Suppliers can make more than one submission, so long as the deadline has not passed, but please take this into account when creating documents that you wish for them to respond with.
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No. When a Buyer creates a Notice they are is asked to choose whether it is a Website (sub-threshold) or OJEU Notice. All OJEU Notices will automatically forwarded to the Official Journal and will also be published on the website.
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Yes, when viewing a Notice, the Buyer would select 'View Questions and Answers'. There is an option to 'Download' Questions and Answers, if applicable.
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All OJEU and website notices (sub OJEU) will appear on the Buying Organisation’s Control Panel and can also be found using the ‘Search Contracts’ facility.
If submitting an OJEU form, the Notice will also be forwarded to the Official Journal of the European Union for publication.
Sell2Wales is an openly accessible website allowing individuals the opportunity to browse Notices without the need to register. However, in order for a Supplier to express interest in an opportunity, Suppliers must first register on the website.
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This has to be carried out by a Controller. From the Buyer Control Panel, select 'Agents' (listed on the Organisation section of the control panel).
If your organisation does not have a Controller or you want the website site support to set up a company or organisation as an agent on your behalf, please contact the help desk.
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Yes. Please see the “Buyer Quick Quote” User Guide from the help section of the Buyer Control Panel: http://www.sell2wales.gov.uk/sitehelp/help_guides.aspx
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No, Suppliers must be registered on Sell2Wales in order to be invited to participate in a Quick Quote.
Buyers should ensure that all Suppliers who they do regular business with are registered on Sell2Wales.
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If you have been informed that a Supplier is on the website please search in the following manner:
- if using the 'Supplier Search' options, please use the 'Search by Details' option. Amend the criteria as applicable.
- At the distribution stage, please use the 'Matching Suppliers' tab, tick the 'Exclude Commodity Categories', and search for the company name. This opens the search to all Suppliers on the website.
Whilst useful for finding Suppliers based on their Keywords and services, the Supplier Finder search is best not to be used at this stage.
If you continue to be unable to find a Supplier, please contact the Support Desk.
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If a Contract Notice was published on Sell2Wales, please use the 'Award' option on yourt Contract Notice. This will populate the Award Notice with relevant details from the Contract Notice. Carefully review the notice to check it is correct and then add the information on the supplier(s) who have been awarded the contract before submitting it for publication.
It is crucial that you do this in order for a link to be made between the Contract Notice and Contract Award Notice as this action determines the list of outstanding Contract Award Notices that your organisation are responsible for. Failure to do this will result in you being chased to create Award Notices.
If your Contract Notice was not published on Sell2Wales, you will need to create a new Contract Award Notice through the Buyer Control Panel > Create Notice option. You will need to fill out all fields as normal.
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In Official Journal Notices (OJEU) it is a required field to comply with the EU Regulations.
This information is considered of reasonable public Interest given that public funds are employed in the financing of the tender.
The compilation of statistics by Government, Welsh and Central, on the level of expenditure of public funds is greatly improved with the amounts being displayed in the award notices.
While below threshold notices are not subject to EU regulations the principles of publishing award notices with the amount recorded are equally valid.
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Yes it can. This is done on your Contract Award Notice - NOT your Contract Notice - using the 'Cancel' option, beside where the Notice deadline details ordinarily are placed.
It is suggested Contract Award Notices not be issued until a contract has been signed.
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If your Buying Organisation does not have a Controller, or you want the website site support to set up a company or organisation as an agent on your behalf, please contact the help desk.
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You can search for Suppliers using the CPV Codes that they have chosen in their Alerts profile. To do this, please click on 'Buyers' from the menu bar, 'Search by Category' in the 'Supplier Search' box, and then work your way through the Categories to your Code. You will then find a list of Suppliers who have specified those Categories.
Another method of doing this would be to add the CPV Code to the end of this link:
http://www.sell2wales.gov.uk/Authority/SupplierSearch/CategorySearch_Results.aspx?id=
For example: CPV Code = 03140000
http://www.sell2wales.gov.uk/Authority/SupplierSearch/CategorySearch_Results.aspx?id=03140000
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The new EU Procurement Directives made provision for the introduction of an ESPD which is intended by the European Commission to remove some of the barriers to participation in public procurement, especially for SMEs.
The ESPD is a self-declaration of a potential supplier’s' financial status, abilities and suitability for a public procurement procedure. It mainly serves as preliminary evidence of fulfilment of the conditions required in a public procurement procedure.
Bidders will no longer have to provide full documentary evidence and different forms previously used in EU procurement, which means a significant simplification of the tendering process.
The ESPD will replace the requirement for suppliers to provide up-front evidence or certificates by allowing them to self-declare that they meet the relevant selection and exclusion criteria. Bidders may be asked to provide proof of this at a later stage and the winning bidder will usually have to provide proof before contract award.
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Buyers will set out their selection and exclusion criteria, including any minimum standards and methods for short-listing in their contract notice. They will then issue an ESPD request and make it available for anyone interested in bidding for the contract.
Bidders will complete and submit their ESPD response to the buyer, who will assess the suitability of all bids against the criteria they have selected.
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The ESPD will offer an alternative to the selection questionnaire, and should make the process of bidding for a public contract easier. Its purpose is to remove some of the barriers to participation in public procurement, particularly for SMEs who often don’t have the resources (time/money) to complete complex tender documents.
The Selection Questionnaire method was popular because buyers tended to ask questions in the same, or similar, ways. The ESPD will actually build upon this as the same standard form is now being used across Europe.
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The same question set will be used across the EU, so a bidder will be able to re-use a form which was previously submitted for a separate competition, so long as the information is still up-to-date.
However, every time a supplier submits a bid, an ESPD request will have to be submitted as well. It will be in the supplier’s interest to configure each ESPD to suit the requirements of that individual procurement exercise.
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By law, a winning bidder has to submit all of the required certificates and documentation, before they are awarded a contract. Bidders can be asked to submit their evidence at any point in the procurement process if this is necessary to ensure that the process is carried out properly.
If a bidder is found to have misrepresented itself, a couple of things can happen, depending on the nature of the misrepresentation:
- If a bidder is in breach of one of the areas which is a mandatory ground for exclusion, or if it does not meet one of the minimum selection criteria, then that bidder must be excluded from the competition. Depending on the nature and stage of the competition, that may mean either that it continues without that particular bidder, or the competition should be re-run without that bidder’s tender.
- If it emerges that a business is in breach of an area which is a discretionary ground for exclusion, then the decision about whether or not to exclude that bidder will be up to the buying authority. This decision must be in line with the EU Treaty Principles of transparency, proportionality, equality of treatment and non-discrimination.
- If the issue is more administrative in nature (e.g. mistakes in providing the documentation), then the authority will have the option of inviting the bidder to make amendments to, or clarify the documentation provided.
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If a bidder wishes to sub-contract part of a contract, and relies entirely on the sub-contractor in order to fulfil the selection criteria, a separate ESPD must be submitted on behalf of the sub-contractor.
The buying authority may choose to request a separate ESPD from any other sub-contractor, in order to verify whether or not there are grounds for excluding it. If a sub-contractor is in a situation which would lead to its mandatory exclusion, the bidder will be required to replace that sub-contractor. It’s really important the suppliers plan for this scenario early in the process by engaging with sub-contractors and obtaining information early on during the procurement process.
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There may be some confusion during the transition period from the Standard PQQ to the Selection Questionnaire to the ESPD. As of 26th September 2016 suppliers should only be receiving (for the most part) the Selection Questionnaire but they are entitled to submit an ESPD if they already have one.
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Yes: Suppliers can set up an email Alert Profile by selecting Categories and Locations relevant to their business.
The Alert Profile can be created by selecting ‘Alert Profile’ under the 'My Profile' section of the Supplier Control Panel.
Once an Alert Profile has been set up, Suppliers will receive an email every time a Notice is published which matches their Categories and Locations.
Accurately selecting the relevant Categories that your Buyer/s uses will result accurate Alerts.
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Yes. Once you have expressed your interest in a Notice, you would select the ‘Documents’ tab. From here it is possible to either download the documents individually, or all documents attached to the Notice by selecting ‘download all current documents (Zip File)’.
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Suppliers see any Additional Information added after the publication of a Notice by selecting the 'Further Info' tab of the Notice.
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Please use the 'Search Contracts' facility on the menu bar. There you can filter your search criteria in various ways.
Reference Numbers come in the form of 'JAN123456'. If you have been provided a different reference, please search using other filters or contact the Support Desk.
If you know the Buyer that has issued a Notice, please use 'Search Buyers' on the menu bar to look up their Buyer Profile and to view the associated Notices.
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Individual files should be no larger than 10MB in size, with a combined limit of 30MB per response.
There is no limit to the number of documents that can be attached to a response, providing that they are below 30MB.
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Please ensure that your file is less than the 10MB individual limit and does not make your Response exceed 30MB in total. If this is the case, please split the file. If it exceeds the 30MB total, please Disptach your response and Create a new response to upload your additional documents to.
Please ensure you are uploading your file/s from your Desktop as this will ensure switfter uploading.
Please ensure that your file name has no special characters in it, e.g. _ - ( ) , " £ &. This may stop your upload.
Please ensure that you do not have your document open on your computer. This would block a successful upload.
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If there is no Postbox available on the tender you would refer to the ‘Full Notice Text’ tab to see where completed documents should be returned to. This would ordinarily be detailed in Section 1 of the Full Text.
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By registering on the website, you are available to be invited to Quick Quotes.
To improve your chances of being included in a Quick Quote, please fill out your Supplier Finder Profile.
Please note: as Quick Quotes are invitation-only, being registered does not guarantee you an invite to a Quick Quote.
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All Supplier accounts on Sell2Wales are individual and only the individual Supplier accounts selected to quote can access the details of the quote and submit a response.
This means that a Supplier must log in with the same email address that was invited; if the invitation was sent to a colleague, you would need to log in with their details. The link contained within the email notifying of a Quick Quote invitation will only work if the log in of the invited party is used.
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If the Supplier name is known to the Buyer, they should search for you using the 'Matching Suppliers' tab on their Distribute Quick Quote page. They would tick the 'Exclude Commodity Categories' box to find you.
You can help them find you, by filling out your Supplier Finder Profile too.
If they continue to be unable to find you, and you are sure you are registered on the website, please refer them to the Support Desk.
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When the Quick Quote has been awarded, all parties will receive a system generated email indicating whether or not they have been successful or unsuccessful.
If you have any queries with regard to a particular award please contact your Buyer directly for assistance.
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When an Award Notice is created, the system chooses the same Categories that were on the original Notice. When the Contract Award is published, the Alert Emails will be sent to Suppliers whose Alert Profile matches the Notice's parameters.
It is possible to search for a Contract Award Notice by looking through your Buyer's profile. This is done through the 'Search Buyers' on the menu bar. You would open the 'Contract Award Notices' tab on their Buyer Profile.
The detail of who was awarded a particular contract will be in the tab ‘Full Notice Text’
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The postbox is an online Tender submission facility which allows Buyers to receive tender responses from Suppliers in a secure environment. A Notice with a Postbox can be idenitifed by a key symbol displayed alongside the Notice.
Responses are submitted to Sell2Wales and held until the deadline for responses has expired.
Please see the user guides from the help section of the Supplier Control Panel: http://www.sell2wales.gov.uk/sitehelp/help_guides.aspx
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To stop your Notice Alert emails please follow the below instructions:
'My Account' (on the menu bar) > 'My Profile' section > 'Alert Profile'.
From here select “Edit your product categories”.
On this page you can delete your selected categories. When no Product Categories are selected there will be no Alert emails sent.
To stop Newsletters please follow the below link and de-select the “Please indicate if you wish to receive an e-mail newsletter” option:
https://www.sell2wales.gov.wales/supplier/Subscriptions/Subs_list.aspx
There is the option to amend the registered details - including the email address and name associated with the account - to that of a colleague.
This can be done by going to 'My Account' (on the menu bar) > 'My Account' section > 'User Details'.
From this page you can amend any details required. All future e-mails will be sent to the new details.
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