Documents, forms & notices
For a common understanding, it is necessary to state what is meant by "document", "form" and "notice".
Document and Document Type
The eProcurement Ontology workgroup defined a "document" as:
A set of interrelated Business Information representing the business facts.
With the additional information:
Documents may convey information in any language, medium or form, including textual, numerical, graphic, cartographic, audio-visual forms, etc.
We will use the "document" term mainly to refer to the XML document (i.e. XML instance) containing all information of a given notice.
For eForms we may distinguish three different document types:
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Prior Information Notice,
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Contract Notice, and
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Contract Award Notice.
While most notices belonging to these categories are expected to have UBL XSD schemas as normative representations, some (e.g. change notices) may involve non-UBL elements and require the use of extensions.
Form and Form Types
The eForms Regulation defines a set of forms and their associated fields foreseen for editing procurement notices. A form is an interim means that assists the contracting authority in the encoding of the required information.
There are different form types. It is common to use the "form type" name as a notice attribute to specify its belonging to a specific form type family (e.g. "Planning Notice" is commonly used to refer to a Notice that has the "Planning" form type).
The Regulation identifies different form types:
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Planning,
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Competition,
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Direct Award Pre-notification (DAP),
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Result,
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Contract Modification,
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Change.
Figure 1 below provides an indicative time-based representation of the different Form Types. This gives an overview of the potential successions or coexistence of the different types of forms.
Planning forms
Planning forms group notices published before the start of the "Call for Competition"; these are often qualified as "Planning Notices". Although "Planning Notices" are not associated to any Procedure and do not have any EU Procedure Identifier assigned, the buyer may already define and use an internal Procedure identifier.
Competition forms
Competition forms lead to the generation of notices initiating the "Call for Competition".
DAP forms
Direct Award Pre-notification (DAP) forms generate notices stating the intention to award a contract directly (i.e. without prior call for competition) to one or more Economic Operators. In contrast to the Result notices generated from the Result forms[1] the DAP notices are published prior to signing the contract. Such notices should also refer to the existing Procedure and notices that enable this awarding method.
Result forms
Result forms are used to produce result notices, which are published shortly after contract signature. They refer to the contract notice and provide award process information like award of contract, winner, etc.
Contract Modification forms
During the contract execution, a contract may need modification. If the start of a new procurement procedure is not needed, then the Contract Modification forms are used to produce a modification notice reporting the modifications applied to the contract.
Change forms
Change forms are used to produce change notices. The purpose of change notices is multifold:
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Correct information reported in a previous Change notice or the original notice,
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Inform about changes to information not inside the notice (e.g. changed procurement documents),
Changes may apply to notices of any form type. A Change notice contains all the information from the initial notice with integrated changes (i.e. consolidated text), as well as information on applied changes. When a change is applied to a previous change notice, it must integrate all changes from all previous change notices, and only have the latest changes described in the change section.
When applying changes, it is essential to ensure that the changes do not require the buyer to start a new procedure. It is the duty of the buyer to check that applied changes do not:
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impact the applicable time limits;
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advantage some economic operators at the expense of others;
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require a procedure restart.
Notice, Notice Types and Subtypes
The ePO workgroup provided the following definition of a "notice":
Document published by the buyer about market opportunities and results.
As clearly stated in the definition, a document may only be considered as a notice after publication; however, at business level, it is common to use the "notice" keyword for notice candidate documents (i.e. document submitted for publication), even before their validation.
Any notice has an identifier that may be referred to, for change or for search purpose.
Speaking about "notice" may designate the XML instance or other related by-products (e.g.: PDF manifestations); in this document, we will mainly refer to the XML instance.
Regarding notices, shortened expressions are commonly used. As illustrations, the two following examples may be provided with expressions like:
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"Planning notice" to refer to a notice of form type "Planning",
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"PIN profile" or "PIN profile notice" for a notice of notice type "PIN profile"
A given form type groups multiple notice types as shown on Table 1 in which form types, document types, notice types, a reference to the column number of Annex II of Regulation (EU) 2022/2303, and a short description, are provided.
The concept of Notice Subtype has also been introduded for a quick, easy and univocal reference to a specific context allowing the identification of the applicable rules set. For the eForms Regulation Annex, the subtype value corresponds to the column number.
| Form Type | Document Type | Notice Type | Regulation Annex Table 2 column (Subtype) | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Planning |
PIN |
PIN profile |
1-3 |
Notice of the publication of a prior information notice (or a periodic indicative notice) on a buyer profile |
PIN only |
4-6 |
Prior information notice, or periodic indicative notice, used only for information |
||
PIN time limit |
7-9 |
Prior information notice, or periodic indicative notice, used to shorten time limits for receipt of tenders |
||
Competition |
PIN |
PIN CFC general |
10-11 |
Prior information notice, or periodic indicative notice, used as a call for competition — standard regime |
PIN CFC social |
12-14 |
Prior information notice, or periodic indicative notice, used as a call for competition — light regime |
||
CN |
QS |
15 |
Notice on the existence of a qualification system |
|
CN general |
16-19 |
Contract, or concession, notice — standard regime |
||
CN social |
20-21 |
Contract notice — light regime |
||
CN subco |
22 |
Subcontracting notice |
||
CN design |
23-24 |
Design contest notice |
||
DAP |
CAN |
CAN VEAT |
25-28 |
Voluntary ex-ante transparency notice |
Result |
CAN general |
29-32 |
Contract, or concession, award notice — standard regime |
|
CAN social |
33-35 |
Contract, or concession, award notice — light regime |
||
CAN design |
36-37 |
Design contest result notice |
||
CM |
Contract modification |
38-40 |
Contract modification notice |
|
Change |
* |
Change notice |
1-40 |
Change associated to any of the above notice type |
