Federal Act
on Public Procurement
(PPA)

¹ The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity shall set out the re­quired tech­nic­al spe­cific­a­tions in the in­vit­a­tion to tender or in the tender doc­u­ment­a­tion. These de­scribe the char­ac­ter­ist­ics of what is to be pro­cured, such as func­tion, per­form­ance, qual­ity, safety, se­cur­ity, di­men­sions and pro­duc­tion pro­cesses, and reg­u­late the la­belling and pack­aging re­quire­ments.

² When set­ting out the tech­nic­al spe­cific­a­tions, the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity shall rely as far as pos­sible and ap­pro­pri­ate on in­ter­na­tion­al stand­ards, or fail­ing that on tech­nic­al reg­u­la­tions used in Switzer­land, re­cog­nised na­tion­al stand­ards or in­dustry re­com­mend­a­tions.

³ Cer­tain com­pan­ies or trade­marks, pat­ents, copy­rights, designs or types, and ref­er­ences to a spe­cif­ic ori­gin or to spe­cif­ic pro­du­cers are not per­mit­ted as tech­nic­al spe­cific­a­tions, un­less there is no oth­er suf­fi­ciently pre­cise or com­pre­hens­ible way of de­scrib­ing the goods, work or ser­vices and the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity in­cludes the words "or equi­val­ent" in the tender doc­u­ment­a­tion. Equi­val­ence has to be proven by the ten­der­er.

⁴ Where ap­pro­pri­ate, the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity shall stip­u­late tech­nic­al spe­cific­a­tions for the con­ser­va­tion of nat­ur­al re­sources or the pro­tec­tion of the en­vir­on­ment.¹²