Tenders website to save Dublin city up to €1m

Dublin City Council will shift its advertising strategy for procurement onto the Web from next week in a move that will save the agency up to €1 million a year.

The council will follow recent decisions by almost all local authorities to publish tender information on the Government's official e-tenders website at www.etenders.gov.ie.

This will enable the council to reduce its newspaper advertising spend dramatically, as much smaller adverts can be placed in national newspapers.

Mr Paul Russell, senior executive officer of procurement at Dublin City Council, said just a brief description of public tenders of about one paragraph would be included in newspaper advertisements.

"It will enable us to make significant annual savings, which amount to a six-figure sum," he said. "It will also hopefully speed up returns to tenders."

Tender adverts will continue to be published in the European Journal as required under law.

Dublin City Council has completed a mail shot to its 2,722 suppliers and has organised help lines for suppliers who experience difficulties with the new system.

Mr Russell said this was just the first in a range of new procurement strategies being organised by the council around a new software system that it introduced, the Oracle iProcurement platform.

"We will look for everything in the procurement process to be done electronically soon," he said.

The e-tenders website, which is managed for the Government by a Belfast-based firm, will shortly begin a pilot project to enable suppliers to submit their tender applications online. Ms Catherine Curley, project manager for www.etender.ie, said that initially applicants would be asked to supply both Web-based applications and hard copies but this might change later.

She said the website had signed up almost 7,000 suppliers since it was introduced in March 2001. About 300 awarding authorities currently use the site.

The site is free to both suppliers and awarding authorities. At present, it offers suppliers the ability to view all public tenders and, in some cases, download the relevant documents.

The site is the initial phase of the Government's recently published Strategy for the Implementation of eProcurement in the Irish Public Sector. This plan should save €400 million by 2007, with potential annual savings of €175 million a year thereafter.