Court rules on evaluation criteria and limitation periods in respect of framework agreement procurements.

A recent decision by the High Court in Northern Ireland highlights two interesting issues relevant to framework agreements. Firstly, in setting the evaluation criteria for a framework agreement procurement, a contracting authority may not rely solely on non-economic evaluation criteria. Secondly, in the event of a procurement challenge, the limitation period for bringing a claim does not always start at the point when the relevant flaw in a contracting authority’s decision is first disclosed to the bidders.

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