Para 9.5 — CONSULT_MANUAL

9.5 Procurement Consultants 1. Consultancy or Non-consultancy: a) Hiring of Procurement agents (PAs) can either be done as a Consultancy Service or Non-consultancy service, depending on the objectives and scope of assignment. b) Consultants: If the role of Procurement Agents primarily involves intellectual analysis, strategic planning, spend analysis, cost control, and advisory functions, it would be appropriate to hire them as Consultancy Services i.e. when they are asked to design/ implement new system or improve value for money or develop strategic procurement or carry out market building/ sourcing etc, where quality weightage of more than 30% is called for. c) Non-consultancy: On the other hand, if their responsibilities are only outsourcing of routine procedures without intellectual decision making, classifying them as outsourcing of Non-Consultancy Services would be suitable, i.e. when they only operate the existing procedures and crucial decisions are made by the client himself, where quality weightage can be 30% or less. In such a case please also refer to para 4.5.3 above.

2. Specific Items: When Procurement consultants are specifically used for handling the procurement of specific items and generally working from their own offices, they are paid a percentage (either fixed or inversely proportional) of the value of the procurements handled (or of savings realised) or a combination of a percentage and a fixed fee. In such cases, they are selected under QCBS, with cost being given a weight of less than 50 (fifty) percent. If the weight of the cost element adopted were as high as 50 (fifty) percent, financial considerations would dominate the selection, creating the risk of an unacceptably lower service quality. In such cases, it is essential to ensure that the quality threshold in the evaluation is set sufficiently high. They shall be selected following the appropriate procedures for other Consultancy assignments using QCBS and time-based contracts, as specified for other Consultancy assignments.

3. Outsourcing of Procurement Function: When Procurement Agents provide services for procurement for a whole project in a specific unit of Procuring Entity, it is usually a nonconsultancy service, unless criteria in sub-para 1-b) above is met.