Structuring state purchase contracts and other procurement arrangements: goods and services guide

Find out the various ways that organisations can structure a procurement arrangement

Procurement arrangements include standing offers and registers

An organisation may establish a standing offer or register that provides for repeated use by one or more other organisations.

Participating organisations may then use these procurement arrangements to acquire goods or services from (selected or pre-qualified) suppliers.

Under the VGPB supply policies, procurement arrangements include:

  • state purchase contracts
  • multi-agency arrangements
  • agency-specific arrangements.

Standing offers

A standing offer is a procurement arrangement that sets out the terms and conditions (including a basis for pricing) on which the selected supplier(s) will supply goods or services to participating organisations for a specified period.

Participating organisations may acquire goods or services under the arrangement by undertaking a purchasing process or procurement process. This will depend on the structure of the arrangement.

Standing offers with multiple suppliers are known as supplier panels.

Registers

A register is a list of pre-qualified suppliers that have satisfied qualification criteria for joining the procurement arrangement to supply goods or services to participating organisations for a specified or indefinite period. Typically, suppliers can apply at any time to participate in the arrangement.

Participating organisations may acquire goods or services under the arrangement by undertaking a procurement process.

The organisation establishing a register should inform potential suppliers of:

  • the (categories of) goods or services covered by the arrangement
  • participating organisation/s
  • the qualification criteria
  • the indicative rules of use (e.g. how buyers will select suppliers)
  • expected demand and that pre-qualification doesn’t guarantee business from participating organisations.

If international agreements apply, additional requirements apply to a register.

The qualification criteria and information requested from potential suppliers should be proportionate to the nature and complexity of the register.

When using a register, buyers will have access to information about pre-qualified suppliers. This information should be reliable, up-to-date, and give buyers confidence to engage pre-qualified suppliers on the register. This will reduce search costs, risk, and administrative burden for buyers.

Options for structuring procurement arrangements

Organisations may structure procurement arrangements as:

  • mandatory or non-mandatory
  • open or closed
  • sole or multiple supplier.

When assessing these options, some considerations may not be relevant to agency-specific arrangements because they involve one organisation only.

Using this guide

This guide accompanies the goods and services supply policies. There are 5 supply policies:

  • Governance policy
  • Complexity and capability assessment policy
  • Market analysis and review policy
  • Market approach policy
  • Contract management and disclosure policy

This guide supports the Market analysis and review policy.

Tools and support

Access a document version of this guide in the Toolkit and library.

This guide supports collaborative procurement. There are 3 guides:

For more information on how to structure collaborative procurement, please contact the goods and services policy team.

Updated