The Design Council and procurement
Procurement refers to all of the processes associated with purchasing goods and services from our suppliers.
The Design Council is principally funded through government and so at all times attempts to follow best practice when procuring from suppliers. We do this by applying the following principles:
- Be as clear, unambiguous and as simple as possible when stating requirements to potential suppliers
- Ensure that procurement decisions are reached fairly and transparently and that the process is documented
- Ensure decisions are approved by the right people at the right time
- Receive value for money
- Demonstrate compliance with best practice and legal requirements
Our procurement practices are reviewed periodically and benchmarked against best practice. Our thresholds change from time to time but always adhere to UK and EU law.
The Design Council is a small organization with a limited budget. Where possible we buy through other government framework agreements to help maximize value for money and to ensure we receive the best possible quality in goods and services we buy.
If you’re interested in working with the Design Council you can do the following:
- Review this page to view outstanding tenders
- Contact our Finance team to find out if you might be eligible to become a preferred supplier or if we commission the types of services you provide
If you are tendering for a contract with us, your bid will be successful if it is the one that offers the best overall value for money. You will be informed of the broad evaluation criteria used for assessing bids as part of the tender documentation. All bidders are assessed against the same criteria. We award a contract as soon as possible after the assessment process has been completed. This might involve you attending an interview where you can present your bid in more detail.
Within the limits of some commercial confidentiality, we will always offer unsuccessful tenderers the reasons why their bid failed. Such de-briefing can be by phone or face to face. This should be viewed as a two way process. Where we offer comments they should be viewed as constructive. They are aimed at making unsuccessful tenderers aware of certain weaknesses and strengths and enable them to better compete for future work.
From time to time we post briefs to this page. If you are interested in them you should carefully review them, checking the closing date and the requirements sections, to understand whether you’re likely to be able to meet our criteria.
For details of Design Council briefs, please refer to our Current Tenders section, situated on the right hand side of this page.
You must only commence work if you’ve been given a valid Purchase Order (PO) number and a copy of a Design Council PO, available here:
Download a copy of our PO Terms and Conditions [PDF 22kb]
Where appropriate we will ask you to complete a goods or services contract. In nearly all cases we will expect you to use our standard contract, available here:
Download a copy of our Standard Contract [Word 132kb]
Please note - you must send invoices directly to our Finance Department. Invoices sent elsewhere may not be paid.