Procurement Act 2023
Commercial vehicles, designed, established and operated
eSourcing Data designs, establishes and operates Procurement Act 2023 commercial vehicles: frameworks, open frameworks, dynamic markets, UDMs and QUDMs, on eSourcing OS. From commercial design and market engagement, through supplier onboarding and qualification, to the competitions, evaluation and award, the Find a Tender notices, and running the arrangement afterwards.
Not sure which vehicle you need? Read the decision guide first →
Use a market we operate
Join a commercial vehicle eSourcing Data has already established and runs. The supplier market is qualified and maintained, the administration is ours, and nobody at your end assesses an application or chases an expiring insurance certificate.
Lower cost, faster to use, and the supplier market already exists.
Founding Buyer Programme →We build and operate yours
We design, establish and run a framework or dynamic market under your own name, on eSourcing OS. Your brand, your conditions, your award decisions, and our operation behind it for as long as you want it.
If using someone else’s market is not something your organisation would ever do, this is the route.
Talk about your own vehicle →Most buyers arrive assuming those are the same conversation. They are not, and the second one is usually the larger piece of work.
What we do
Design, establish, operate
Two of these are projects with an end date. The third is not, and it is the one that decides whether the whole thing was worth doing.
Design
Weeks, and the part that decides everything after it
Category strategy, and what the vehicle is actually for. The parts or lots, drawn so a specialist supplier can join the one that fits rather than being sized out by a single broad category. The conditions of participation, which for a dynamic market are fixed at establishment and cannot be changed for its whole life, so they are worth arguing about now rather than regretting later. Evaluation methodology, governance and the audit trail, designed to be defensible under challenge rather than assembled afterwards.
Establish
Notices, configuration, and a market that is not empty
The notices published and the platform configured: parts, conditions, evidence requirements, competition templates and the supplier onboarding route. Then the part most establishment projects skip, which is recruitment. A market with no suppliers in it is worse than no market at all, because the first competition proves it and the buyer who ran that competition does not come back. Supplier recruitment is part of establishing a vehicle, not something that happens later if there is budget left.
Operate
Every month, for the life of the arrangement
Applications assessed against the published conditions within a reasonable period. Supplier clarifications answered. Compliance monitored, with expiring evidence chased before it lapses rather than after. Membership decisions made and recorded with reasons. Competitions set up and run. Notices published at the stage that triggers them. This is the phase that is always underestimated, and it is the difference between a vehicle still working in year five and one that quietly stopped.
Operating it
What a managed market actually means
Anyone can establish a vehicle. The question a supplier asks in month eight, when their insurance certificate is about to expire and nobody has told them, is whether it is being run. So these are the standards we work to, published rather than described.
Behind them sits a market operations function: a named team responsible for application review, supplier clarifications, compliance monitoring, membership decisions, buyer support and notice administration. Not a shared inbox somebody checks when they get a chance.
Control
What is delegated, and what never is
The most common hesitation about an operated market is that it means handing over procurement. It does not, and it could not: award decisions belong to the contracting authority and stay there.
You keep
- Category strategy and what the vehicle is for
- Evaluation criteria and weightings
- Every award decision
- Your relationship with your suppliers
- The contracts and their terms
We take on
- Assessing applications against the conditions you set
- Supplier clarifications and onboarding
- Compliance monitoring and expiry chasing
- Notices, publication and market modifications
- Running the competitions, and the audit trail
If you already have one
Replacing a framework or a DPS
Almost nobody starts from nothing. There is usually a framework running out, a DPS inherited from a predecessor regime, or an arrangement that technically still exists and that nobody has used for two years. Replacing one is a different piece of work from establishing a first vehicle, and the difference is mostly archaeology.
Find out what actually flows through it
Published notices tell you what was advertised. They do not tell you what proportion of the category actually went through the arrangement rather than around it. That number decides whether you are replacing something load-bearing or retiring something ceremonial.
Check whether the conditions still describe the market
Conditions written four years ago frequently exclude suppliers who did not exist then and admit some who should not be there now. This is the single most valuable thing to revisit, and for a dynamic market it is the thing you cannot revisit later.
Ask whether the successor should be the same shape
Plenty of arrangements were the right answer when they were let and would not be chosen today. A framework that has been extended twice is often a dynamic market that nobody had the option of building at the time.
Plan the overlap, not the switch
Live call-offs continue under the arrangement that created them. The new vehicle takes new work. A hard cutover on a date is how buyers end up with a gap where neither route is usable.
Tell your incumbent suppliers early
They will find out. A supplier who hears about the replacement from a notice rather than from you arrives at the new market suspicious, and you need them in it.
On timing: a DPS is a PCR 2015 instrument and the dynamic market is its Procurement Act successor, so owners will need to move. We do not publish a deadline for that, because the timetable is not settled and an authority that plans around a wrong date from us has every reason to stop trusting our other numbers.
More than one buyer
Vehicles shared across organisations
A vehicle used by one organisation and a vehicle used by twenty are different propositions, and the second is frequently the only way the first becomes affordable. Where several bodies call off from the same arrangement, the cost of establishing and operating it properly is spread, and a better-administered market becomes justifiable rather than a luxury.
Who may use it
Permitted users have to be defined before publication, and defined too narrowly is a problem you cannot fix afterwards without modifying the market. Think about who might reasonably want access in three years, not only who has asked today.
Who decides what
One organisation usually leads on strategy and conditions while others call off. That arrangement works, but it needs writing down: which decisions are the lead body’s, which are collective, and what happens when a member wants something the conditions do not allow.
Who pays for operation
Somebody funds the administration. Spread across members, carried by the lead body, or for a utilities market funded through membership fees. All three work; leaving it undecided does not.
What suppliers see
A supplier qualifying once for a market used by twenty buyers is getting a genuinely better deal than one qualifying for a single organisation, and that is worth saying in recruitment. Liquidity attracts suppliers, and suppliers attract buyers.
The unglamorous part
What happens when something goes wrong
Vehicles are sold on the good days. These are the bad ones, and how they are handled is a better test of an operator than anything on the rest of this page.
An award is challenged
The defence is the record: the criteria as published, the scores as given, the moderation as it happened, and the reasoning as it was written at the time. That record exists because the procurement was run in the system rather than reconstructed from it afterwards. This is the single strongest argument for running the process somewhere that logs it.
A supplier disputes a membership decision
Decisions are made against the published conditions and recorded with their reasons, so a dispute is answered by pointing at the condition rather than by relitigating a judgement nobody wrote down. There is a published complaints and escalation route, and it goes somewhere.
An admitted supplier performs badly
Membership and performance are different things, and conflating them is a route to a legal problem. Poor delivery is a contract management matter, handled through KPIs, reviews and the contract terms. Membership is only at risk where a supplier stops meeting the published conditions.
A supplier lets their evidence lapse
Reminders at ninety, thirty and seven days, then a defined process rather than a surprise. Nobody should discover mid-competition that a bidder’s insurance expired in March.
The market needs to change
Scope and parts can be modified with the right notice. Conditions of participation for a dynamic market cannot, which is why the design phase gets the attention it does and why we would rather argue about them in month one than apologise in year three.
Before anything is published
The pack that has to exist first
A market is a set of documents before it is a piece of software. This is what gets drafted and legally reviewed before a notice goes anywhere, and it is the part that separates a vehicle which survives a challenge from one that was configured over a weekend.
For a dynamic market the conditions of membership matter more than anything else on that list, because they are fixed at establishment and cannot be changed for the life of the market. Set them too high and the SMEs you wanted are excluded; too low and you spend years managing around suppliers you should not have admitted.
How long it takes
Weeks, and where the weeks actually go
With decisions made promptly, design through to launch is a matter of weeks rather than months. That caveat is doing real work: the build is rarely the constraint.
The long pole is almost always internal approval, not the build. Information security review, data protection sign-off, legal, and whatever committee has to see it. We would far rather meet those people in week one than discover a blocker after the design is fixed, so we ask about them in the first conversation rather than the fifth.
Commercials
How engagements are structured
A fixed fee for design and launch, and a monthly fee to operate, scaling with the number of categories and the volume of competitions. For utilities, calibrated membership and award fees can make a market substantially self-funding, which is the practical reason the qualifying route is worth understanding before defaulting to an ordinary dynamic market.
A review comes first and produces a costed roadmap, so nobody commits to a number before the shape of the thing is agreed. We are on G-Cloud 15 (RM1557.15), so a contracting authority can appoint us directly from the framework rather than running a tender to procure the people who run tenders.
The review
What you actually get back
“Free review” means nothing unless somebody says what arrives at the end of it. You describe a requirement you have coming up. We come back with a written view covering four things: which vehicle fits it and why, what establishing each realistic option would involve in time and effort, what it would mean for your supplier market including who is currently excluded, and where the decision is genuinely marginal rather than obvious.
It takes us a couple of hours, there is nothing to sign, and the output is yours whether you engage us or not. If the honest answer is that a framework you already have is fine, that is what it will say. We would rather be the people who told you that than the people who sold you a market you did not need.
Where to go next
Depending on where you are
Not sure which route fits
The decision guide: five vehicles compared, and the six questions that decide between them.
Read the guide →A utility, interested early
Shape a qualifying utilities dynamic market before it is established, on founding terms.
Founding buyers →A supplier wanting in
Qualify once and compete for everything that comes through the market.
For suppliers →Ready to talk
Tell us a requirement you have coming up and we will come back with a view. Free, nothing to sign.
Start a conversation →Questions
Commercial vehicles, answered
What is a commercial vehicle under the Procurement Act 2023?
A commercial vehicle is the route a buyer uses to bring suppliers to market and award work through: a framework, an open framework, a dynamic market, or for utilities a utilities dynamic market or qualifying utilities dynamic market. Choosing between them fixes how a category is bought for years, which is why the decision is worth taking deliberately rather than by default.
Can eSourcing Data build a dynamic market under our own name?
Yes. There are two routes and buyers choose either. A buyer can use a market that eSourcing Data operates, or eSourcing Data can design, establish and operate a market under that buyer’s own name, on eSourcing OS. Organisations that would not use a market run by someone else usually take the second route, and it is typically the larger piece of work.
What does establishing a commercial vehicle actually involve?
Three phases. Design covers category strategy, the parts or lots, conditions of participation, evaluation methodology and governance. Establish covers the notices, the platform configuration, the supplier onboarding route and a recruitment campaign so the vehicle has a real field from day one. Operate covers everything afterwards: assessing applications, monitoring compliance, running competitions and publishing notices, for the whole life of the arrangement.
How long does it take to set up a dynamic market?
With decisions made promptly, design through launch is typically a matter of weeks rather than months: category strategy and conditions of participation first, then the market notice and platform configuration, then supplier recruitment so the first competitions have a real field. The long pole is usually internal approval, not the build.
Who runs the market day to day once it is live?
Somebody has to, for the market’s whole life. Applications need assessing within a reasonable period, supplier clarifications need answering, compliance needs monitoring, membership decisions need making and recording with reasons, notices need publishing and competitions need running. eSourcing Data operates markets as a managed service, with the buyer keeping strategy, criteria and every award decision.
What does it cost?
Engagements are structured as a fixed fee for design and launch and a monthly fee to operate, scaling with the number of categories and the volume of competitions. For utilities, calibrated membership and award fees can make a market substantially self-funding. A review produces a costed roadmap before anyone commits to anything.
Do we lose control of our procurement?
No. The buyer sets the strategy, owns the evaluation criteria and makes every award decision. What is delegated is the administration: assessing applications against the conditions you set, monitoring compliance, publishing notices and running the process. Award decisions are not delegated and could not be.
Does this replace our existing eSourcing platform or ERP?
No. eSourcing OS can provide the qualified supplier market and the procurement workflow alongside systems you already run, with integration considered later. Replacing an incumbent stack is not a precondition of establishing a vehicle with us.
Can utilities charge suppliers to join a dynamic market?
Uniquely, yes. A qualifying utilities dynamic market may charge suppliers fees connected with obtaining and maintaining membership, and may run tenders visible only to members. General contracting authorities cannot charge membership fees: for an ordinary dynamic market a fee may only be charged to a supplier that is awarded a contract.
How do we buy this without running a tender?
Through G-Cloud 15 (RM1557.15), where eSourcing Data lists services on the Digital Marketplace. A contracting authority can appoint us directly from the framework.
A free commercial vehicle review
Tell us a requirement you have coming up. We come back with an initial view on whether a framework, an open framework or a dynamic market fits it best, what establishing each would involve, and what it would mean for your supplier market. Nothing to sign.
Ask for a review