III.A.1. Administrative Tender Preparation: Administrative Team Defined

Estimated Execution Time

1 week

Objective

To establish the internal tender management team, defining administrative, legal, and procedural team that will coordinate the future tender preparation and publication, ensuring readiness and compliance with innovation procurement rules.

This activity ensures organisational readiness and compliance with innovation procurement rules (PCP/PPI), including administrative traceability, legal robustness, and financial accountability. It also defines the governance structure for decision-making, accountability, reporting lines, and oversight mechanisms throughout the procurement process.

Who is Involved

Procurement Office / Legal Department – defines administrative structure, roles, and reporting lines.
Finance and Administration Units – ensure financial traceability and compliance.
Innovation / R&D Unit – connects operational and strategic dimensions of the procurement process.
Management / Steering Committee – validates the team composition and governance model.
External Legal Advisors (if applicable) – support alignment with EU and national frameworks.

Activities / Tasks

III.A.1.1. Define Roles and Required Expertise

Draft role descriptions for the specific activity.

Core procurement Team – A representative of each of the procurers’ entities with decision-making authority. Responsible for drafting, coordination, documentation control, and procedural compliance. The committee has the power to overseeing the fair assessment and final selection of tenders.
Tender Committee – A representative of the administrative, legal and finance departments of the lead procurer of the tender. Other procurers’ entities can also be present in the opening of the envelops. The committee has the power to overseeing the fair procedure, evaluation and assessment of the bidders, and final selection of providers.

III.A.1.2. Define administrative procedures and compliance mechanisms

Assign internal staff based on needed roles, ensure their commitment and availability. Ensure that all important roles are covered internally or by the consortium members.
Establish document management and version-control procedures.
Define administrative timelines aligned with procurement milestones.
Ensure financial management and traceability mechanisms are in place.
Confirm compliance with national and EU innovation procurement frameworks.
Establish ways to approve parts of the tender (e.g. monthly assembly, quorum and voting rules for critical decisions, templates for minutes, etc…),
Set-up recurrent meetings to advance in the tender preparation, distribute tasks and/or clarify parts of the processes.
Confirm readiness of all administrative units to support the tender process.
Ensure internal alignment between administrative, technical, and strategic teams.

Tips / Common Pitfalls

✅ Clearly separate administrative governance from technical content development.

✅ Foster continuous cross-functional collaboration and regular checkpoints.

✅ Seek for internal capacity-building or use external facilitators, if needed.

❌ Incorrect appointment of tender committee members, not committed, forward thinking, natural innovators.

❌ Underestimate complexity of innovation procurement.

Outcome / Deliverables

Clear team structure and process structure
Stakeholders and key personnel engaged and committed during the procurement plan and timeline
Key personnel sufficiently trained and capacitated for contributing or executing the innovation procurement instruments.

Resources

Guidelines for Innovation Procurement (PCP/PPI)

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