28. For professional service contracts, the Public Protector may make a public call for tenders in 2 stages in order to award a contract.
In the first stage, the Public Protector selects service providers by soliciting only a quality demonstration. The tender documents must indicate whether every selected service provider or only a limited number of them will be invited to take part in the second stage.
The selection committee evaluates the quality of a tender according to the following conditions and procedure:(1) if all the selected service providers are invited to take part in the second stage, the quality of a tender is evaluated in accordance with the evaluation conditions in Schedule 1 and all the providers who meet at least the minimum quality level are retained;
(2) if only a limited number of service providers are invited to take part in the second stage, the quality of a tender is evaluated in accordance with the evaluation conditions in sections 1 to 7 of Schedule 2 and only those who obtain the highest final scores are retained.
In the second stage, the public body invites the selected service providers to submit a tender that includes only a price or a quality demonstration with or without a price.
If only a price is required, sections 18, 20, 21 and 33 to 35 apply and, where the quality level of a tender is evaluated, sections 19 to 27 and 29 to 31 apply.