Federal Act
on Public Procurement
(PPA)

¹ In the dir­ect award pro­ced­ure, the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity awards a pub­lic con­tract dir­ectly without an in­vit­a­tion to tender. The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity is en­titled to ob­tain com­par­at­ive quotes and to con­duct ne­go­ti­ations.

² The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity may award a con­tract us­ing the dir­ect award pro­ced­ure ir­re­spect­ive of the threshold value if one of the fol­low­ing con­di­tions is met:

a.

In the open, se­lect­ive or in­vit­a­tion pro­ced­ure, no tenders or re­quests to par­ti­cip­ate are re­ceived, no tender meets the es­sen­tial re­quire­ments of the tender or the tech­nic­al spe­cific­a­tions, or no ten­der­er meets the eli­gib­il­ity cri­ter­ia.

b.

There are suf­fi­cient in­dic­a­tions that all of the tenders re­ceived in the open, se­lect­ive or in­vit­a­tion pro­ced­ure are based on un­law­ful agree­ments af­fect­ing com­pet­i­tion.

c.

Due to the tech­nic­al or artist­ic fea­tures of the con­tract or for reas­ons of in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­erty pro­tec­tion, only one ten­der­er is eli­gible and there is no ap­pro­pri­ate al­tern­at­ive.

d.

Due to un­fore­see­able events, pro­cure­ment be­comes so ur­gent that, even with shortened dead­lines, an open, se­lect­ive or in­vit­a­tion pro­ced­ure can­not be car­ried out.

e.

A change of ten­der­er for goods, work or ser­vices to re­place, sup­ple­ment or ex­tend sup­plies already provided is not pos­sible for eco­nom­ic or tech­nic­al reas­ons, would cause con­sid­er­able dif­fi­culties or would en­tail sub­stan­tial ad­di­tion­al costs.

f.

The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity is pro­cur­ing ori­gin­al products (pro­to­types) or new types of sup­plies which are pro­duced or de­veloped at its re­quest as part of a re­search, tri­al, study or new de­vel­op­ment con­tract.

g.

The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity is pro­cur­ing sup­plies on com­mod­ity ex­changes.

h.

The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity can pro­cure sup­plies at a price sig­ni­fic­antly lower than the cus­tom­ary prices due to a fa­vour­able, tem­por­ary of­fer (par­tic­u­larly in the case of li­quid­a­tion sales).

i.

The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity is award­ing the fol­low-up con­tract to the win­ner of a plan­ning or turn­key con­tract com­pet­i­tion or of a se­lec­tion pro­ced­ure for plan­ning or turn­key con­tract stud­ies; the fol­low­ing con­di­tions must be met:

1.

the pre­ced­ing pro­ced­ure was con­duc­ted in com­pli­ance with the prin­ciples of the law;

2.

the pro­posed solu­tions were as­sessed by an in­de­pend­ent pan­el of ex­perts;

3.

the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity re­served the right in the in­vit­a­tion to tender to award the sub­sequent con­tract in a dir­ect award pro­ced­ure.

³ The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity may use the dir­ect award pro­ced­ure to award a con­tract as de­scribed in Art­icle 20 para­graph 3 if the dir­ect award pro­ced­ure is of ma­jor sig­ni­fic­ance:

a.

for main­tain­ing do­mest­ic com­pan­ies which are im­port­ant for na­tion­al de­fence; or

b.

for safe­guard­ing Switzer­land's pub­lic in­terests.

⁴ The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity shall pre­pare doc­u­ment­a­tion with the fol­low­ing con­tent on each con­tract awar­ded in ac­cord­ance with para­graphs 2 or 3:

a.

the name of the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity and the ten­der­er se­lec­ted;

b.

the type and value of the sup­plies pro­cured;

c.

an ex­plan­a­tion of the cir­cum­stances and con­di­tions jus­ti­fy­ing the use of the dir­ect award pro­ced­ure.

⁵ Pub­lic con­tracts may not be defined with the in­ten­tion that only one spe­cif­ic ten­der­er is con­sidered for the award from the out­set, par­tic­u­larly due to the tech­nic­al or artist­ic fea­tures of the con­tract (para­graph 2 let­ter c) or in the case of re­pla­cing, sup­ple­ment­ing or ex­tend­ing sup­plies already provided (para­graph 2 let­ter e).