Regulation 2. Interpretation

"ancillary purchasing activities" means activities consisting in the provision of support to purchasing activities, in particular in the following forms:

(a) technical infrastructure enabling contracting authorities to award public contracts or to conclude framework agreements for works, supplies or services;

(b) advice on the conduct or design of public procurement procedures;

(c) preparation and management of procurement procedures on behalf and for the account of the contracting authority concerned;

"black listed person" means any person, whether legal or natural, with whom a contracting authority and any body governed by public law shall be prohibited from carrying out any procurement whether directly or as a sub-contractor or as a member of a consortium and, or joint venture;

"bodies governed by public law" means bodies that have all of the following characteristics:

(a) they are established for the specific purpose of meeting needs in the general interest, not having an industrial or commercial character;

(b) they have legal personality; and

(c) they are financed, for the most part, by the State, regional or local authorities, or by other bodies governed by public law; or are subject to management supervision by those authorities or bodies; or have an administrative, managerial or supervisory board, more than half of whose members are appointed by the State, regional or local authorities, or by other bodies governed by public law;

"candidate" means an economic operator that has sought an invitation or has been invited to take part in a restricted procedure, in a competitive procedure with negotiation, in a negotiated procedure without prior publication, in a competitive dialogue or in an innovation partnership;

"candidate concerned" means a candidate who has not yet received information from a contracting authority about the rejection of his application before the notification of the contract award decision to the tenderer concerned;

"central government authorities" means the contracting authorities listed in Schedule 6 and, in so far as corrections or amendments have been made at national level, their successor entities;

"centralised purchasing activities" means activities conducted on a permanent basis, in one of the following forms:

(a) the acquisition of supplies and, or services intended for contracting authorities;

(b) the award of public contracts or the conclusion of framework agreements for works, supplies or services intended for contracting authorities;

"central purchasing body" means a contracting authority providing centralised purchasing activities and, possibly, ancillary purchasing activities;

"Commission" means the Commission of the European Union;

"common technical specification" means a technical specification in the field of ICT laid down in accordance with Articles 13 and 14 of Regulation (EU) 1025/2012;

"conflicts of interest" shall at least mean any situation where any person, including staff members of the contracting authority or of a procurement service provider acting on behalf of the contracting authority, who are involved in the conduct of the procurement procedure or may influence the outcome of that procedure have, directly or indirectly, a financial, economic or other personal interest which might be perceived to compromise their impartiality and independence in the context of the procurement procedure;

"conformity assessment body" shall be a body that performs conformity assessment activities including calibration, testing, certification and inspection accredited in accordance with Regulation (EC) No 765/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 9 July 2008 setting out the requirements for accreditation and market surveillance relating to the marketing of products;

"contracting authorities" means the State, regional or local authorities, bodies governed by public law or associations formed by one or more such authorities or one or more such bodies governed by public law;

"contract award notice" means an award notice to be published in the Official Journal of the European Union;

"contract notice" means a notice to be published in the Official Journal of the European Union;

"Contracts Committees" means the General Contracts Committee and, or the Special Contracts Committee;

"CPV" means the Common Procurement Vocabulary as adopted by Regulation (EC) No. 2195/2002 as amended from time to time;

"departmental tender" means tenders issued by contracting authorities with an estimated value which falls under the threshold established under regulation 9(1)(a);

"design contests" means those procedures which enable the contracting authority to acquire, mainly in the fields of town and country planning, architecture and engineering or data processing, a plan or design selected by a jury after being put out to competition with or without the award of prizes;

"direct contracts" means contracts awarded without recourse to a prior call for competition;

"Director" means the Director of Contracts who heads the Department of Contracts;

"Director of Employment and Industrial Relations" shall have the same meaning as specified in the Employment and Industrial Relations Act;

"Director Sectoral Procurement" means the Director responsible for the administration and management of the Sectoral Procurement Directorate;

"economic operator" means any natural or legal person or public entity or group of such persons and, or entities, including any temporary association of undertakings and shall cover equally the concepts of contractor, supplier and service provider;

"electronic means" refers to electronic equipment for the processing (including digital compression) and storage of data which is transmitted, conveyed and received by wire, by radio, by optical means or by other electromagnetic means;

"European Technical Assessment" means the documented assessment of the performance of a construction product, in relation to its essential characteristics, in accordance with the respective European Assessment Document, as defined in point 12 of Article 2 of Regulation (EU) No 305/2011 of the European Parliament and of the Council;

"Evaluation Committee" means boards or committees appointed by contracting authorities with the purpose of evaluating tenders received and for making recommendations thereon;

"framework agreement" means an agreement between one or more contracting authorities and one or more economic operators, the purpose of which is to establish the terms governing contracts to be awarded during a given period, in particular with regard to price and, where appropriate, the quantity envisaged;

"government’s e-procurement platform" means the electronic platform for procurement as established by the Director;

"ineffectiveness" means a contract awarded illegally or when the procurement procedure was not followed correctly;

"innovation" means the implementation of a new or significantly improved product, service or process, including but not limited to production, building or construction processes, a new marketing method, or a new organisational method in business practices, workplace organisation or external relations inter alia with the purpose of helping to solve societal challenges or to support the Europe 2020 strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth;

"irregular tenders" means tenders which do not comply with the procurement documents, which were received late, where there is evidence of collusion or corruption, or which have been found by the contracting authority to be abnormally low;

"label" means any document, certificate or attestation confirming that the works, products, services, processes or procedures in question meet certain requirements;

"label requirements" means the requirements to be met by the works, products, services, processes or procedures in question in order to obtain the label concerned;

"life cycle" means all consecutive and, or interlinked stages, including research and development to be carried out, production, trading and its conditions, transport, use and maintenance, throughout the existence of the product or the works or the provision of the service, from raw material acquisition or generation of resources to disposal, clearance and end of service or utilisation;

"Member State" means a member state of the European Union;

"Minister" means the Minister responsible for Finance;

"modification" means any change, variation or amendment to the original terms of the contract including but not limited to the introduction of new conditions and to the removal or replacement of existing conditions;

"negotiated procedures" means those procedures whereby contracting authorities consult the economic operators of their choice and negotiate the terms of a contract with one or more of these;

"notice" means a notice published in the Gazette;

"prior information notices" means a notice published in the Official Journal according to what is specified under Part I;

"procurement" means acquisition by means of a public contract of works, supplies or services by one or more contracting authorities from economic operators chosen by those contracting authorities, whether or not the supplies, works, or services are intended for a public purpose;

"procurement document" means any document produced or referred to by the contracting authority to describe or determine elements of the procurement or the procedure, including the contract notice, the prior information notice where it is used as a means of calling for competition, the technical specifications, the descriptive document, proposed conditions of contract, formats for the presentation of documents by candidates and tenderers, information on generally applicable obligations and any additional documents including clarifications;

"procurement service provider "means a public or private body which offers ancillary purchasing activities on the market;

"public contracts" means contracts for pecuniary interest concluded in writing between one or more economic operators and one or more contracting authorities and having as their object the execution of works, the supply of products or the provision of services;

"public service contracts" means public contracts having as their object the provision of services other than those referred to in the definition of public works contracts;

"public supply contracts" means public contracts having as their object the purchase, lease, rental or hire-purchase, with or without an option to buy, of products, which may include, as an incidental matter, siting and installation operations;

"public works contracts" means public contracts having as their object one of the following:

(a) the execution, or both the design and execution, of works related to one of the activities within the meaning Schedule 15;

(b) the execution, or both the design and execution, of a work;

(c) the realisation, by whatever means, of a work corresponding to the requirements specified by the contracting authority exercising a decisive influence on the type or design of the work;

"regional authorities" includes authorities listed non-exhaustively in Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) 1 and 2, as referred to in Regulation (EC) No 1059/2003 of the European Parliament and of the Council, while "local authorities" includes all authorities of the administrative units falling under NUTS 3 and smaller administrative units, as referred to in Regulation (EC) No 1059/2003;

"restricted procedures" means those procedures in which any economic operator may request to participate and whereby only those economic operators invited by the contracting authorities may submit a tender;

"Review Board" means the Public Contracts Review Board;

"Sectoral Procurement Directorate" means the directorate responsible for the administration, evaluation and recommendation on behalf of contracting authorities listed under Schedule 16 of calls for tenders published under an open or restricted procedure where the estimated value of such calls exceeds ten thousand euro (€10,000) but it does not exceed the threshold of seven hundred and fifty thousand euro (€750,000);

"SME" has the same meaning as that given under Commission Recommendation 2003/361/EC;

"standard" means a technical specification, adopted by a recognised standardisation body, for repeated or continuous application, with which compliance is not compulsory, and which is one of the following:

(a) "international standard" means a standard adopted by an international standardisation organisation and made available to the general public;

(b) "European standard" means a standard adopted by a European standardisation organisation and made available to the general public;

(c) "national standard" means a standard adopted by a national standardisation organisation and made available to the general public;

"technical reference" means any deliverable produced by European standardisation bodies, other than European standards, according to procedures adapted to the development of market needs;

"technical specification" means either:

(a) in the case of public works contracts the totality of the technical prescriptions contained in particular in the procurement documents, defining the characteristics required of a material, product or supply, so that it fulfils the use for which it is intended by the contracting authority; those characteristics include levels of environmental and climate performance, design for all requirements (including accessibility for disabled persons) and conformity assessment, performance, safety or dimensions, including the procedures concerning quality assurance, terminology, symbols, testing and test methods, packaging, marking and labelling, user instructions and production processes and methods at any stage of the life cycle of the works; those characteristics also include rules relating to design and costing, the test, inspection and acceptance of conditions for works and methods or techniques of construction and all other technical conditions which the contracting authority is in a position to prescribe, under general or specific regulations, in relation to the finished works and to the materials or parts which they involve; or

(b) in the case of public supply or service contracts a specification in a document defining the required characteristics of a product or a service, such as quality levels, environmental and climate performance levels, design for all requirements (including accessibility for disabled persons) and conformity assessment, performance, use of the product, safety or dimensions, including requirements relevant to the product as regards the name under which the product is sold, terminology, symbols, testing and test methods, packaging, marking and labelling, user instructions, production processes and methods at any stage of the life cycle of the supply or service and conformity assessment procedures;

"TFEU" means the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union;

"tenderer" means an economic operator that has submitted a tender;

"tenderers concerned" means tenderers who have not yet been definitely excluded. An exclusion is definitive if it has been notified to the tenderers concerned and has either been considered lawful by the Review Board or can no longer be subject to review before the Court of Appeal;

"unacceptable tenders" means tenders submitted by tenderers that do not have the required qualifications, and tenders whose price exceeds the contracting authority’s budget as determined and documented prior to the launching of the procurement procedure;

"VAT" means value added tax under the Value Added Tax Act;

"work" means the outcome of building or civil engineering works taken as a whole which is sufficient in itself to fulfil an economic or technical function;

"written" or "in writing" means any expression consisting of words or figures which can be read, reproduced and subsequently communicated, including information transmitted and stored by electronic means.