Tender specifications

Enteric pathogens – microbiological support for surveillance at the EU level

Contract notice

Contract award notice

Service contract template

Third party Guidelines

Third party Form

Questions and Answers:

1. Question:

What will be the number of participating laboratories? One laboratory per

Member State (=27) plus 1 laboratory from Iceland, 1 from Liechtenstein and

1 from Norway (total: 30 labs)?

Answer:

The general principle is to provide opportunity for one reference level public health laboratory per member state (27) to participate and one laboratory for each of the three EEA countries and the three the candidate countries, i.e. in total 33 laboratories.

2. Question:

Additional non-EU Member States should have

the possibility to participate for their own costs? How many non-EU laboratories can be expected?

Answer:

Yes, non-EU countries can participate at their own cost. So far, five non-EU member states have expressed their interest.

3. Question:

The number of EQA schemes per year is not specified. Can I make the assumption of 1 study per year?

Answer:

The number of schemes is a balance between the time available for organizing the EQA rounds and what is considered as necessary to maintain or improve the competence in the laboratory. This is something the tenderer should elaborate on.

4. Question:

Is it foreseen to organise an annual meeting for the group of particpants?

Answer:

This is not included in the tender. Feedback to the participants will, besides through the reports, be given in the annual meetings of the network for food and water borne diseases arranged by ECDC.

5. Question

In C. 4 Specification of LOT1 & 2 the call for tender specifies that the "tenderer should prepare in close collaboration with ECDC a detailed proposal on how to provide EQA schemes for the national reference level laboratories ..." Is this "close collaboration with ECDC" to take place before or after the offer dead line?

Answer:

The tenderer is expected to present in the offer a general proposal on how to provide the EQA schemes. This is done by the tenderer without any involvement of ECDC and should be submitted before the deadline. The winner of the tender will then elaborate further on the proposal with input from ECDC (i.e. “in close collaboration”). ECDC needs to accept the final proposal before the tenderer can organize and perform the EQA activities (i.e. “under supervision”).

6. Question

The same question applies to C 5 Deliverables where it is stated that the tenderer should "Prepare a proposal under the supervision of  ECDC to organize and then perform EQA for ..."

Is this supervision to occur before or after the offer dead line? 

Answer

See the reply above.

7. Question
Budget: does the ECDC prefer to use standard EU salary rates?

If yes, what are those for
1) Academics
2) Technicians
3) Administrative personnel
4) other...

If no, should we use actual incurred cost??

Answer
There are no standard salary rates. The purpose of competitive tendering for awarding contracts is to obtain the desired quality of services and supplies at the best possible price.

Therefore it is up to the tenderer to propose a price for a given service bearing in mind that when their tender will be evaluated, the technical quality will be weighted against the price so that the economically most advantageous offer can be established.

8. Question

In the UK there are two national reference laboratories for the identification and characterisation of Salmonella and E. coli in humans; one for England & Wales and one for Scotland. In the past both laboratories have been funded to participate in the annual EQA rounds for Salmonella and E. coli. Is this still the case for the current tender?

Answer

Currently we only have the possibility to fund participation of one laboratory per country (see further Question 1 on the web page for this call for tender). As the EQAs for Salmonella and E. coli are separate it is though possible for two different laboratories to participate from one country, i.e. one per disease. There may also be a possibility for additional laboratories in a country to participate at their own cost but this needs to be negotiated further with the awarded tenderer.