Federal Act
on Public Procurement
(PPA)

¹ In the open and se­lect­ive pro­ced­ure, the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity pub­lishes the pri­or no­tice, the in­vit­a­tion to tender, the award and the aban­don­ment of the pro­ced­ure on an in­ter­net plat­form for pub­lic pro­cure­ment op­er­ated jointly by the Con­fed­er­a­tion and the can­tons. It also pub­lishes awards that were made us­ing the dir­ect award pro­ced­ure for con­tracts above the ap­plic­able threshold for the open or se­lect­ive pro­ced­ure. This does not ap­ply to con­tracts awar­ded us­ing the dir­ect award pro­ced­ure in ac­cord­ance with An­nex 5 sec­tion 1 let­ters c and d.

² The tender doc­u­ment­a­tion is gen­er­ally made avail­able at the same time and elec­tron­ic­ally. Ac­cess to these pub­lic­a­tions is free of charge.

³ The or­gan­isa­tion com­mis­sioned by the Con­fed­er­a­tion and the can­tons to de­vel­op and op­er­ate the in­ter­net plat­form may im­pose fees or charges for the con­tract­ing au­thor­it­ies, ten­der­ers and oth­er parties that use the plat­form or as­so­ci­ated ser­vices. These are based on the num­ber of pub­lic­a­tions or the scope of the ser­vices used.

⁴ In the case of con­tracts with­in the scope of in­ter­na­tion­al treat­ies that are not pub­lished in an of­fi­cial lan­guage of the World Trade Or­gan­iz­a­tion (WTO), the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity shall pub­lish a sum­mary of the no­tice in an of­fi­cial lan­guage of the WTO at the same time as the in­vit­a­tion to tender. The sum­mary must con­tain at least the fol­low­ing:

a.

sub­ject of the pro­cure­ment;

b.

time­frame for sub­mit­ting tenders or re­quests to par­ti­cip­ate;

c.

where the tender doc­u­ment­a­tion can be ob­tained.

⁵ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late any ad­di­tion­al re­quire­ments con­cern­ing the lan­guages of pub­lic­a­tions, the tender doc­u­ment­a­tion, sub­mis­sions by ten­der­ers and the pro­ced­ure. It may take ap­pro­pri­ate ac­count of Switzer­land's pluri­lin­gual­ism. It may modi­fy the re­quire­ments ac­cord­ing to sup­ply types. The fol­low­ing prin­ciples ap­ply, sub­ject to ex­cep­tions ex­pressly spe­cified by the Fed­er­al Coun­cil:

a.

In the case of con­struc­tion con­tracts and as­so­ci­ated sup­plies of goods and ser­vices, in­vit­a­tions to tender and awards must be pub­lished in at least two of­fi­cial lan­guages, par­tic­u­larly in the of­fi­cial lan­guage at the con­struc­tion loc­a­tion.

b.

In the case of sup­ply and ser­vice con­tracts, in­vit­a­tions to tender and awards must be pub­lished in at least two of­fi­cial lan­guages.

c.

Any of­fi­cial lan­guage may be used for sub­mis­sions by ten­der­ers.

⁶ Con­tracts awar­ded with­in the scope of in­ter­na­tion­al treat­ies gen­er­ally have to be pub­lished with­in 30 days. The no­ti­fic­a­tion must con­tain the fol­low­ing in­form­a­tion:

a.

type of pro­ced­ure used;

b.

sub­ject and scope of the con­tract;

c.

name and ad­dress of the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity;

d.

date of the award;

e.

name and ad­dress of the ten­der­er se­lec­ted;

f.

total price of the tender se­lec­ted or, in ex­cep­tion­al cases, the low­est and highest total prices of the tenders in­cluded in the award pro­ced­ure, in­clud­ing VAT.