Award criteria

The award criteria are defined in Article 44 of the Law on Public Procurement and Article 56 of the Law on Public Procurement in the sectors. As a rule, award criteria relate to the subject matter of the contract and not to the characteristics of the candidate or tenderer. The award criteria are therefore not KO criteria, as is the case with the suitability criteria, but criteria that can be fulfilled in different ways, which can lead to correspondingly different evaluations of the individual tenders. The contract is awarded to the most economically advantageous tender. The most economically advantageous tender is determined on the basis of price or cost using a cost-effectiveness approach, such as life cycle costing, and may include the best price-performance ratio. The best price-performance ratio shall be determined on the basis of the following criteria in particular, which are related to the subject matter of the contract and include qualitative, environmental and/or social aspects:

• quality, including technical merit, aesthetics, practicality, accessibility, design for all, social, environmental and innovative characteristics and trade and related conditions;
• the organization, qualifications and experience of the staff assigned to the execution of the contract, where the quality of the staff assigned may have a significant impact on the level of execution of the contract, or
• the after-sales service and technical assistance, the delivery conditions such as the delivery date, the delivery procedures and the delivery or execution period.

The above list of award criteria is not exhaustive. Further award criteria may be defined, provided they comply with the principles of non-discrimination and equal treatment.

The contracting authority specifies in the contract notice, the tender documents or - in the case of a competitive dialog - in the description how it weights the individual criteria in order to determine the most economically advantageous tender. The weighting of the award criteria can be specified by means of a margin, the widest range of which must be appropriate. If, in the opinion of the contracting authority, the weighting cannot be specified for understandable reasons, it shall specify the criteria in descending order of importance. The order of the award criteria in the tender documents corresponds to the weighting of the individual criteria, i.e. the first criterion mentioned has the highest weighting. For reasons of transparency and equal treatment of all applicants and tenderers, the weighting of the award criteria must be stated in the tender documents. Furthermore, the disclosure of the weighting of the award criteria in the tender documents is also advantageous in the context of an appeal procedure.