Soumissionner à un marché public de travaux sous la Tenders Law

Open the bid record and check the gates in order: the contractor classification certificate covers this field and activity at a grade that carries this contract value, the commercial registration and the chamber membership are current, the Saudization band is not one that suspends government services, and the zakat, tax and social insurance certificates are in date. Where one is missing, that is the work, not the estimate.

Pourquoi: Under the Contractor Classification Law the classification is not a credential that helps, it is a condition of award. Grades run from one to five and each carries a ceiling on the value of works it may take, so a firm classified in the right field at too low a grade is refused on a contract it can build. Two weeks of estimating spent before anybody looked at the certificate is the most common way a Saudi contractor loses money on a tender he never entered.

Bring the schedule of quantities in as it was issued, keeping the authority's item numbering, and record every addendum against the version it changed. Raise clarifications inside the window the tender gives, because a question asked after it closes is a question you will answer yourself in the price.

Pourquoi: Government bids are compared item by item against the authority's own numbering, so a bid that renumbers or merges items is hard to evaluate and easy to set aside. Keeping the issued structure intact also means an addendum landing three days before the deadline changes two lines rather than forcing a re-read of the whole bill.

Build each rate from labour, plant, material and subcontract rather than from last year's bid, and record what the rate assumed: the productivity, the working week of Sunday to Thursday, the reduced hours the Labour Law imposes during Ramadan, and the site conditions in the region the works are in.

Pourquoi: A government contract is fixed price against measured quantities, so the rate is the only place a wrong assumption can be recovered from, and it cannot. Writing the assumption next to the rate is also what makes a later claim about changed conditions arguable, because you can show what was priced rather than assert what was meant.

Split the planned spend into what stays in the Kingdom and what leaves it, package by package, and collect the evidence behind each line: your own local content certificate, the certificates of the subcontractors and suppliers you are relying on, and the products that sit on the mandatory list of national products.

Pourquoi: Local content in government procurement is administered by the Local Content and Government Procurement Authority, which sets the measurement methodology and issues the certificates, and it is scored rather than admired. A percentage asserted in a covering letter is worth nothing at evaluation. A percentage built from named suppliers with certificates behind them survives the check and is also the thing you will have to deliver against afterwards.

Instruct the bank for the initial guarantee at the percentage of the bid the tender documents state, which the Tenders Law will not let fall below one percent, and record three things about it: the amount, the beneficiary exactly as the tender names it, and the expiry date with the calendar it is written in. Guarantee validity in the Kingdom is commonly expressed in Hijri months.

Pourquoi: The initial guarantee is what makes the bid real, and it is refused for form as readily as for amount, a beneficiary named loosely being the usual cause. The expiry is the quiet one. Where the authority extends the bid validity and the guarantee was written for a fixed number of Hijri months, the extension outlives the guarantee, and a bid with a lapsed guarantee is excluded without anybody having criticised the price.

Sign and lodge the bid through the government procurement platform before the deadline, and keep the signed set exactly as it went: the priced bill, the technical proposal, the guarantee, the certificates and the addenda you confirmed receipt of.

Pourquoi: Bids are opened at a fixed time and a late submission is not considered, whatever the reason. The archived set matters afterwards rather than before: when the authority asks a month later whether you priced against addendum three, the answer should be a document with a signature on it, not a recollection.

On the award notification, instruct the final guarantee at five percent of the contract value in favour of the government entity and lodge it inside the period the award letter allows, then register the contract with its payment regime, its guarantees and the advance payment arrangement, where the contract carries one, secured by a bank guarantee for the whole of the advance.

Pourquoi: The final guarantee is a condition of signing rather than an administrative follow up, and the period to produce it is short. A contractor who treats the award as the finish line loses days at the bank and can forfeit the initial guarantee for failing to complete. The advance payment guarantee belongs on the same record because the advance is recovered through the interim certificates and the guarantee is reduced as it is recovered, and the two figures only agree if somebody is reading them together.

Register the dates that carry a consequence with the person who owns each one: the guarantee expiries in the calendar they were written in, the classification certificate renewal, the zakat and tax certificates, and the bid validity where an award has not yet landed.

Pourquoi: Every item on that list expires quietly and none of them announce it. A classification certificate that lapses mid tender disqualifies a bid that was winning, and a guarantee written in Hijri months runs out about eleven days earlier each year than a reader working in Gregorian months expects. One register with owners is the difference between a renewal and an incident.