Procurement Acronyms

• CA - Contracting Authority This is the name of the organisation advertising the tender on eTendersNI e.g. Translink, NI Water, Housing Executive, Radius Housing, Lisburn and Castlereagh City Council

• CfT - Calls for Tender Procedures applied to generate offers from companies competing for works, supply or service contracts in the framework of public procurement. Calls for tenders, contract awards and pre-information notices can also be found online on eTendersNI

• CPV Codes - Common Procurement Vocabulary codes have been developed by the European Union specifically for public procurement. Their main purpose is to help procurement personnel to classify their contract notices consistently and correctly and to help suppliers find the notices which are of interest to them by using a standardised vocabulary.

• DPS - Dynamic Purchasing System Similar to an electronic framework agreement, but where new suppliers can join at any time.

• DUNS - Dun & Bradstreet. Used to look up a company's D-U-N-S number

• EO - Economic Operator. A supplier, the bidder of a tender i.e. your company

• FA - Framework Agreement

• MEAT - Most Economically Advantageous Tender Enables the contracting authority to take account of criteria that reflect qualitative, technical and sustainable aspects of the tender submission as well as price when reaching an award decision.

• NUTS - Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics Used to reference the subdivisions of countries for statistical purposes. eg UKN0 = Northern Ireland, UKN16 = Fermanagh and Omagh

• PIN - Prior Information Notice A method for providing the market place with early notification of intent to award a contract/framework and can lead to early supplier discussions which may help inform the development of your specification

• SC - Specific Contract (in the context of a Framework Agreement or DPS)

• TED - Tenders Electronic Daily the online version of the 'Supplement to the Official Journal' of the EU, dedicated to European public procurement

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