Version 18 December 2015

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION IN RELATION TO THE CALL FOR TENDER 2015/S 238-432517

“Small and Medium-sized Enterprises In European Regions and Cities"

The present document, version 18 December 2015, includes the following additional information from
the Contracting Authority for requests received on:

Info Request # Reception date of information requests:

#1 09/12/2015
#2 17/12/2015
#3 17/12/2015
#4 17/12/2015

Questions and answers are detailed in sections below.

NB: the present information has been sent by email to all applicants having requested the Terms of Reference of
the Call for Tender until the date of this document.

Please find here below requests of information from tenderers by email (tenders@espon.eu) and the
complementary information provided by the Contracting Authority:

***

Information Request # 1 of 09/12/2015

1. Additional information on the Operation Programme

“Any other background document is more than welcome, including the operational programme, which
has been recently approved but is not yet available online?”

 The ESPON 2020 Cooperation Programme is available at the ESPON website under this link:
http://www.espon.eu/main/Menu_About/Menu_ESPON2020Programme/ESPON2020_
CP.html

Information Request # 2 of 17/12/2015

1. Additional information page limit

“Is there any page limit applying to proposals/applications?”

 There is no page limit for tenders.

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Information Request # 3 of 17/12/2015

1. Additional information on a possible Sounding Board/Scientific Committee

“Is there a possibility to have a Sounding Board/Scientific Committee in a joint tender, advising the
scientific work of the consortium, with no explicit staff budget but only travel/subsistence
reimbursement?”

2. Additional information on institutional partners

“Is it possible to include in a joint tender institutional partners with no explicit staff budget but only
travel/subsistence reimbursement?”

 As mentioned in the section 3.1 of the Terms of Reference: “A statement on reasons of joint
tender and / or subcontracting must be included in the tenderers’ offer […] How the
cooperation will be organised in order to achieve the expected results. This organisation must
cover both, technical aspects and administrative/financial issues, stating clearly activities and
tasks allocated as well as the roles and responsibilities of joint tender member(s) or
subcontractors.”
 As mentioned in the section 4.2 of the Terms of Reference: “If several service providers are
participating in a consortium or are subcontractors of the main tenderer, each of them who
contribute to the technical performance of the contract has to provide proof of his technical
and professional capacity to carry out the tasks allocated.”
 It is up to the tenderer to decide how to propose to ensure the scientific quality of the service.
It should be noted that during the implementation of the applied research activity, the ESPON
EGTC will also involve in-house scientific expertise to review deliveries and to oversee the
steering of all tasks, in consultation with the PST (project support team).
 The budget of the tender has to be presented according to the Financial Offer (Annex D of the
Terms of Reference). In this table there is no possibility to differentiate between the
individual amounts of the tenderers in case of a joint tender. Hence, it is up to the tenderers
to propose the budget according to the set frameworks.

Information Request # 4 of 17/12/2015

1. Additional information on who can submit a tender

“Can an NGO submit a tender or would they have to build a consortium?”

 Any tenderer who meets the selection criteria as stipulated in section 4.2 of the Terms of
Reference can submit a tender.
 As mentioned in the section 3.1 of the Terms of Reference: “The tender shall be submitted
either by one contractor only, by a group acting jointly or by a natural person acting on
his/her own account”.

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