Innovation In Public Procurement - Part II: Volume Discount Standardisation

One of the most significant contracting authorities in the field of social welfare and health in Finland conducted a wide public procurement on medical supplies and devices. The challenge in this procurement was that there were several hundreds of products to procure and the suppliers were chosen separately for every product. Attorneys at law Borenius Ltd acted as a legal advisor in this supply procurement in the autumn and winter of 2011.

The tender evaluation based only on price. The contracting authority set high competence requirements and required detailed information about possible reclamations.

In the procurement there were several tenderers and they all applied very different discount mechanisms for their deliveries. Therefore, we recommended these mechanisms to be harmonised in the procurement documentation. The tenderers were informed about our recommendation to count the volume discounts per supplier according to the final value of the procurement