Understanding the random selection process

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In circumstances where Health & Social Care Trusts and public safety bodies need to seek expressions of interest for works projects not covered by the Health Projects Register of Contractors, the random selection process has been developed for short-listing, to ensure a transparent and auditable process.

The random selection process

Where random selection is used for the purposes of short listing the procedure described below will apply. The randomly selected list shall be electronically saved as a record of the procedure.

The contracting authority will then carry out a compliance check on the requisite number of PQQPs identified and if any of the economic operators from the first selection fail the compliance check then further economic operators will be selected from the randomly selected list until the five economic operators have been identified.

The random selection procedure is:

  1. Economic Operator (EO) submits PQQP onto eTendersNI
  2. All EOs exported from eTendersNI will be authenticated before random selection by staff member at least deputy principal grade or equivalent
  3. After the deadline for submission, the contracting authority will download, from eTendersNI, the list of EOs into a random selection generator1 that will produce a randomly ordered list of submissions.
  4. The random selection generator will be run once only for the PQQP list for single EO applications and verified on completion.
  5. The randomly selected list of EO submissions shall be electronically saved as a record of the procedure.
  6. A compliance check of the first five EOs selected from the randomly ordered list shall confirm the completeness of the information submitted - incomplete or inadequate information may result in the PQQP application being disqualified.
  7. EOs selected from the randomly ordered list that fail a compliance check will be removed from the competition and the next applicant on the randomly ordered list shall be selected. The compliance check shall continue until five compliant EOs have been identified.
  8. The contracting authority will observe the confidentiality of the randomly ordered list. The PQQP assessment panel shall only be issued with the PQQPs of those EOs who have passed the compliance check process. Panel assessment personnel shall not have access to the full randomly ordered list.
  9. If any of the selected EO fails the PQQP assessment then panel assessment personnel shall inform the contracting authority who will then carry out a compliance check on the next available EO on the randomly ordered list (see vi above) and issue the necessary PQQP documentation. This process will continue until five EOs have passed the PQQP criteria to go forward to the ITT stage.

[1] Specialist software that uses a standard algorithm to produce unbiased, randomly sorted lists while maintaining a fully auditable record of inputs and outputs

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