This presentation by the Romanian Competition Council made during a discussion at the 58th meeting of the Working Party 2 of the Competition Committee on 15 December 2014. Find out more at http://www.oecd.org/daf/competition/tenders-and-auctions.htm

1. How to design tenders to achieve
desired outcomes
- Romania’s experience -
Daniela ELEODOR, PhD
Romanian Competition Council

2. Overall challenges in tendering
procedure
 The contracting authority has the freedom to choose between the
two available award criteria: the most economically advantageous
tender or the lowest price;
 The introduction of quality in tendering still under development –
the lowest price criterion prevails in practice;
 Efforts to ensure a good implementation of the legislative
framework in place especially related to uncovering, proving and
sanctioning of the conflict of interest;
 Implementation of the 2014 EU Directives into national legislation
– important to be fine-tuned with the national particularities of the
system, to achieve best value for the money;
 Increased attention to professional training of the specialized staff
from contracting authorities: more frequent use of external experts
with good knowledge of the relevant markets;

3. Regulation of local public
transport services
 Legislation in process of further adaptation to EC Regulation
1370/2007 regarding railway and road passenger transport
services;
 Local public transport services (LPTS) regulated by: Public utilities
Law + Law on local public transport services;
 Regulations adopted by the National Regulatory Authority for
Municipal Services (NRAMS) and Ministry of Transport ;
 NRAMS - regulatory authority that sets the legal framework for the
organization and provision of LPTS;
 Ministry of Transport - competences related to the organization of
the service (design of routes), the quality of the transport means
and that of the service;
 Local authorities – obligation to provide, organize, regulate,
coordinate and control the supply of LPTS in their jurisdiction;

4. Organizational forms in local
public transport
 Local municipalities may provide public transport services:
 Directly, through transport operators of the relevant municipality
(direct management);
 Indirectly, by concluding a contract for delegation of LPTS with
one or several independent transport operators;
 The organizational framework significantly influence the usage and
enforcement of quality requirements;
 In practice, tendering of bus routes: option prevalent in the case of
county or smaller towns public transport (not enough economies of
scale, no town-owned transport operator);
 Direct management: in large cities where the main transport
operators are municipalities-owned;

5. Ensuring quality of the service in
the tendering procedure
 Requirements related to the necessary investments are known
by the bidders from the start of tendering procedure (;
 Public consultation of the tender documentation encouraged by
the legislation – crucial for achieving the best value of the
service and for preventing the selection of a non-performant
winner;
 Quality and performance indicators – part of tender
documentation – incentives for their follow-up in terms of
management and control;
 Consideration of quality aspects and tariff of the service
required in the evaluation of bids and selection of the operator;
 The adoption of a clear and explicit evaluation scheme of bids -
important;

6. Methodology for selection of
transport operators at county level
 5 quality criteria in place for the selection of bids for the award of
bus routes;
 Criteria with impact on passenger safety, quality of the service and
environment: the age of bus fleet, accessibility of buses, comfort
conditions, air-conditioning equipment, the uninterrupted experience
of the transport operator on the route;
 Each quality criterion is defined by a number of determinants
benefiting from a different rating (points);
 The weight in the bid of each criterion is given by the arithmetical
mean of aggregated points achieved for all determinants of a
criterion.
 In case of bids receiving equal scoring, the route license is awarded
to the transport operator recording the highest score for the criterion
named comfort conditions;

7. Ensuring quality in the contractual
period
 The winner of the tender has the interest to deliver better services
because it bears the risk revenue;
 No reward/bonus in the form of an extension of the duration of the
contract;
 Duration of the contract enough to allow recoupment of investments, but
it can not exceed 6 years in the case of buses;
 If new routes have to be added in the course of the validity of the
contract, a new tender procedure will be organized;
 Municipal authority in charge with regular monitoring of the supply of the
public service at the quality, efficiency and performance standards -
penalties, termination of the public service contract, in some cases
and/or annulment of the transport license of the transport operator in
breach;

8. RCC’s involvement in the design of a tender for
allocation of bus routes by regular trips at
county level
 RCC - Sector inquiry covering 6 counties from South-East region
of Romania starting from allegations of unfair competition deeds in
Constanta county;
 Recommendations:
 the introduction of the price of the service in the methodology
for scoring bids and their weight;
 the replacement of the criterion “uninterrupted experience of
the transport operator on the route” with the criterion “the
experience in the field of passengers road transport” so not to
create a competitive advantage to the incumbents;
 Ongoing discussion with all relevant central and local
administrative authorities to find the proper balance between the
price and quality in the tender design;