With the development of the government order system a new service has appeared in the market – support of the participation in biddings. Taking into account increasing amounts of procurements and difficulty of bidding procedures the service is in demand. Sometimes such factors as knowing the legislation and correct application of legal rules are deemed decisive for the successful outcome of participation in biddings.
  
What problems do the participants face beginning in this sphere? What advantages do the lawyers’ services give? All the queries will be answered by Andrey Pushkin, Managing partner of the legal company Tenzor Consulting Group.
  
  
— So the company found out a purchase of concern on the website of the government order. What is the further procedure? What should one begin with? 

— First of all it is necessary to inspect all the documentation and make a monitoring of the information regarding the regional biddings of goods and services which the prospective participant is interested in. It is important to gauge one’s strength, probability of the high-grade performance of the service stipulated by the government contract. And the most important point is to fill in the offered forms of documents in a correct and precise way.

Moreover, it’s necessary to remember that by filing an application for a participation in a tender, the applicant confirms his preparedness to offer the goods, work or services necessary for the client. It’s essential to follow the chosen strategy rigorously, and observe the conditions given in the application after conclusion of the government contract.
  
— What obstacles can a prospective participant face at the very beginning? 

— One of the common cases is secretion of the order placement procedure. This is done by means of adding to requisition title the figures or Latin letters which are misunderstood or not found at all thereby narrowing down the spectrum of the prospective participants.

One more wide-spread bypass is a removal of participants by formal reasons. As the rules of filling the multivolume documentation are based on many nuances, it is quite easy to find faults with every single dot. Furthermore the federal law doesn’t stipulate cassation of the tender results on grounds of work quality and qualification; thereby it is a good opportunity to pull up one’s friendly candidate and give him more scores.

We happened to come across such cases when the work performance time was so short that there was no necessity to take part in biddings of this kind. It is what the state customer counts on placing a notification about the tender, and that is what one’s friendly company relies on which has a finished work that needs to be signed only.
  
— What advantages does the lawyer’s work give to the participants of the procurement process?

— Legal services and services of other kind in the sphere of the government order started to appear after the federal law dated from July 25, 2005. № 94-FL “Placement of orders on goods delivery, work execution, service rendering for state and municipal needs came into effect.

Taking into consideration the state customer one can see the following advantages in the activity of exterior legal advisors. As a rule, the company that renders services in the sphere of state procurement, has experienced specialists of different spheres of activity on the strength so that they are capable to be totally engaged in the questions regarding this or that tender. Such company has all the chances and resources for successful fulfillment of the project, and if it’s necessary to re-form in accordance with the change of the requirements and the complex of the current tasks. 

The lawyers of the state customer are regular employees, and they fulfill the tasks concerning the organization of tender in addition to their basis activity. That results in poorly prepared documents, making compulsory changes and additions to the tender documentation, along with some conflicts.

As for the very participants of the order placement they often suffer from the lack of due experience for preparation of the package of documents for biddings, there is no labor forces for the correct cassation of the results etc.   

Recourse to the highly professional lawyers helps to shorten the time and financial expenditure for preparation of participation in contests, biddings or request for quotations thus reducing the possibility of application rejection to minimum. One should remember about the representation of the lawyer in the Federal Arbitration Court in case the state customer appraised the application unjustly or rejected it at all.  
  
— What is the price situation for the legal support of the government order?

— As a rule the price level for preparation of the package of documents for participation in a tender and further representation is discussed individually, thus all depends on the difficulty of the tender. Therefore the legal services cost can vary from 10 thousand to millions of rubles.

— Recently some law firms offer such service as government relations of the participant in government structures. How serious are these offers?

— This kind of service can be undoubtedly rendered provided the company has a clout in the government structures.   However it is almost impossible to check it, that’s why it is necessary to deal with suchlike applications very carefully, since in this case the price increases significantly while there is no guarantee of the successful outcome.