Public procurement

Are you interested in working with us as a supplier of goods or services? We will take you through the procedure for responding to our calls for tender.

As an intermunicipal company, Sibelga is required to use a public procurement procedure for the purchase of its goods and services. We issue a large number of tenders that cover a variety of goods and services. They range from desks to cabling, from the car fleet to cleaning. To become one of our suppliers, follow this guide.

Public procurement and Sibelga

Every year, we launch about 30 public procurement contracts to cover our company's needs. These needs include:

  • the purchase of supplies such as desks, pipes, cables, our car fleet...
  • the provision of services such as marketing agencies, the caterer for our canteen, recruitment agencies, the cleaning company, etc.

We also distinguish between recurrent and new contracts.

  • Recurring contracts are linked to needs already identified in our company. This could be, for example, a 4-year cable supply contract. For this type of contract, we re-tender before the end of the existing contract.
  • New contracts are requests for proposals that we issue as a result of a new need that has arisen in one of our departments.

How can you find out about our calls for tender?

Are you a company that offers goods or services? Would you like to become one of our suppliers? Check out our current public contracts.

There are two ways for you to find out about our calls for tender:

  1. The Belgian tender bulletin;
  2. The Official Journal of the European Union

Before submitting your bid, we advise you to read our general terms and conditions of purchase (FR/NL). Here you will find all the information you need about our procedures and internal rules.

Public procurement: our 12-step procedure

In accordance with the legislation in force, our entire public procurement procedure is conducted on a digital platform. 

The steps in our tender and contract award process are as follows:

  1. We publish the call for tender in the tender bulletin and in the OJEU.
  2. Interested suppliers can download our tender documents via the e-notification platform.
  3. Suppliers submit their applications on the platform.
  4. We make an initial qualitative selection, identifying suppliers who have the capacity to perform the contract. This selection of bidders is based on the criteria stipulated in the notice, legal criteria and the specific characteristics of the contract (references and capacities).
  5. We send the specifications to this selection of bidders.
  6. We offer these candidates a question and answer session via the platform. 
  7. Bidders submit a technical and financial offer.
  8. We analyse the suitability of the offer against the criteria of the general and technical specifications. 
  9. We select the supplier on the basis of administrative criteria, the acceptability of the offer and the proposed price, which must be within the price range defined in the specifications.
  10. We award the contract to this supplier, having secured the approval of our Management Committee, which meets 11 times a year.
  11. We publish the contract notice.
  12. We begin the contract.

Our calls for tender can take the form of a negotiated procedure. During the procedure, we can then request a new offer from the chosen supplier. 
When awarding a contract, we sometimes draw up a framework agreement. This is a contract with presumed quantities and a predefined contract period.

The supervisory authority's control over our public procurement

All documents that were part of the procedure must be submitted to our supervisory authority. This is the Brussels Capital Region. This authority ensures that we have complied with the rules for awarding the contract.  

Duration of our public procurement procedure

In the case of an advertised contract, the process takes between 6 and 9 months, on average. We factor in the legal time frames, which stipulate a period of at least 30 days between the tender notice and the reception of bids. On top of this comes the time necessary for analysis and approval by our Steering Committee.
For an unadvertised contract, the period is somewhat shorter. It is around 3 months maximum. If the contract is urgent or small, the qualitative selection and subsequent phases are faster.

Our purchases outside the public procurement procedure 

Any order for goods or services above the threshold defined in the Royal Decrees must be subject to a public procurement procedure.
Below this publication threshold, we take the initiative of contacting several companies that meet our needs. We send them our specifications. Then, according to our predefined criteria, we make our choice among the respondents.

The list of public contracts awarded

As soon as we award a contract, details of the contract are published in the Tender Bulletin. This includes the type of purchase, the value of the contract, the name of the successful bidder, the duration of any framework contract, etc.

For our part, we publish all the contracts tendered in the previous year in our annual report. These are the contracts approved by our Management Committee and communicated to the supervisory authorities. Curious about which contracts have been awarded in recent years? Just have a look at our annual reports.

Who to contact with your questions on public procurement?

All your questions and requests for information can be sent by e-mail to public_procurement@sibelga.be.

See also the law of 17 June 2016 on public procurement and our general purchasing conditions.