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).