The Importance of Market Engagement – What does Good Look Like?

Hosted by the CIPS South Wales branch

This CIPS event is hosted by Transport for Wales and is a unique learning opportunity for buyers and suppliers from all industry sectors to hear from experts and reflect on the effective design and delivery of market engagement activity.

Preliminary market engagement under the Procurement Act 2023 (the Act) takes place before the publication of a tender or transparency notice and helps contracting authorities and the market prepare for the procurement. This engagement is of particular importance under the Act, where contracting authorities have significant flexibility to design and tailor their competitive procurement procedures. However, this engagement must be conducted in a way that does not give a supplier an unfair advantage or distort competition.

https://www.gov.wales/sites/default/files/publications/2024-07/procurement-act-2023-guidance-preliminary-market-engagement.pdf

Regardless of whether you operate in the public or private sector, meet the buyer and supplier engagement events have historically been somewhat patchy and the purpose has not always been clear. This event will set out clearly what good looks like and why engaging with suppliers, especially SMEs and VCSEs (voluntary, community led and social enterprise) early on is critical to delivering socially responsible procurement in Wales.

The speaker panel and the round table discussion will cover the following topics:

• TfW approach to market engagement: commercial contracts team
• The importance of market engagement to delivery
• Suppliers’ perspective on why market engagement is important to their businesses

Click here to register