Request for Proposals (RfP): Media Relations

Media Relations

RfP Reference: RAM-25-04-016

Welcome to this Procurement by the Secretariat of the Convention on Wetlands (called “the Secretariat” for the rest of this document). The Secretariat is hosted by IUCN, you therefore may come across a mention of IUCN. You are hereby invited to submit a Proposal. Please read the information and instructions carefully because non-compliance with the instructions may result in disqualification of your Proposal from this Procurement.

1.              REQUIREMENTS

1. A description of the services and/or goods to be provided can be found in Attachment 1.

2.              CONTACT DETAILS

• During the course of this procurement, i.e. from the publication of this RfP to the award of a contract, you may not discuss this procurement with any the Secretariat or IUCN employee or representative other than the following contact. You must address all correspondence and questions to the contact, including your Proposal.

3.              PROCUREMENT TIMETABLE

• This timetable is indicative and may be changed by the Secretariat at any time. If the Secretariat decides that changes to any of the deadlines are necessary, we will publish this on our website and contact you directly if you have indicated your interest in this procurement (see Section 3.2).

• Please email the Secretariat contact to express your interest in submitting a Proposal by the deadline stated above. This will help the Secretariat to keep you updated regarding the procurement.

4.              COMPLETING AND SUBMITTING A PROPOSAL

• Your Proposal must consist of the following four separate documents:
• Signed Declaration of Undertaking (see Attachment 2)

• Pre-Qualification Information (see Section 4.3 below)
• Technical Proposal (see Section 4.4 below)
• Financial Proposal (see Section 4.5 below) Proposals must be prepared in English.
  • Your Proposal must be submitted by email to the Secretariat Contact (see Section 2). The subject heading of the email shall be [RfP Reference – bidder name]. The bidder name is the name of the company/organisation on whose behalf you are submitting the Proposal, or your own surname if you are bidding as a self-employed consultant. Your Proposal must be submitted in PDF format. You may submit multiple emails suitably annotated, e.g. Email 1 of 3, if attached files are too large to suit a single email transmission. You may not submit your Proposal by uploading it to a file-sharing tool.

IMPORTANT: Submitted documents must be password-protected so that they cannot be opened and read before the submission deadline. Please use the same password for all submitted documents. After the deadline has passed and within 12 hours, please send the password to the Secretariat Contact. This will ensure a secure bid submission and opening process. Please DO NOT email the password before the deadline for Proposal submission.

• Pre-Qualification Criteria

The Secretariat will use the following Pre-Qualification Criteria to determine whether you have the capacity to provide the required goods and/or services to the Secretariat. Please provide the necessary information in a single, separate document.

• Technical Proposal

The Technical Proposal must address each of the criteria stated below explicitly and separately, quoting the relevant criteria reference number (left-hand column).

Proposals in any other format will significantly increase the time it takes to evaluate, and such Proposals may therefore be rejected at the Secretariat’s discretion.

Where CVs are requested, these must be of the individuals who will actually carry out the work specified. The individuals you put forward may only be substituted with the Secretariat’s approval.

The Secretariat will evaluate Technical Proposals with regards to each of the following criteria and their relative importance:

• Financial ProposalThe Financial Proposal must be a fixed and firm annual (12 months) price for the provision of the goods/services stated in the RfP in their entirety.Prices include all costs

Submitted rates and prices are deemed to include all costs, insurances, taxes (except VAT, see below), fees, expenses, liabilities, obligations, risk and other things necessary for the performance of the Terms of Reference or Specification of Requirements. The Secretariat will not accept charges beyond those clearly stated in the Financial Proposal. This includes applicable withholding taxes and similar. It is your responsibility to determine whether such taxes apply to your organisation and to include them in your Financial Proposal.

• Applicable Goods and Services Taxes

Proposal rates and prices shall be exclusive of Value Added Tax.

• Currency of proposed rates and prices

All rates and prices submitted by Proposers shall be in CHF

• Additional information not requested by the Secretariat should not be included in your Proposal and will not be considered in the evaluation.
  • Your Proposal must remain valid and capable of acceptance by the Secretariat for a period of 90 calendar days following the submission deadline.
  • Withdrawals and Changes

You may freely withdraw or change your Proposal at any time prior to the submission deadline by written notice to the Secretariat Contact. However, in order to reduce the risk of fraud, no changes or withdrawals will be accepted after the submission deadline.

5.              EVALUATION OF PROPOSALS

• Completeness

The Secretariat will firstly check your Proposal for completeness. Incomplete Proposals will not be considered further.

• Pre-Qualification Criteria

Only Proposals that meet all of the pre-qualification criteria will be evaluated.

• Technical EvaluationScoring Method

Your Proposal will be assigned a score from 0 to 10 for each of the technical evaluation criteria, such that ‘0’ is low and ‘10’ is high.

• Minimum Quality Thresholds

Proposals that receive a score of ‘0’ for any of the criteria will not be considered further.

• Technical Score

Your score for each technical evaluation criterion will be multiplied with the respective relative weight (see Section 4.4) and these weighted scores added together to give your Proposal’s overall technical score.

• Financial Evaluation and Financial Scores

The financial evaluation will be based upon the full total price you submit. Your Financial Proposal will receive a score calculated by dividing the lowest Financial Proposal that has passed the minimum quality thresholds (see Section 5.3.2) by the total price of your Financial Proposal.

Thus, for example, if your Financial Proposal is for a total of CHF 100 and the lowest Financial Proposal is CHF 80, you will receive a financial score of 80/100 = 80%

• Total Score

Your Proposal’s total score will be calculated as the weighted sum of your technical score and your financial score.

The relative weights will be:

Technical:      70%

Financial:       30%

Thus, for example, if your technical score is 83% and your financial score is 77%, you will receive a total score of 83 * 70% + 77 * 30% = 58.1% + 23.1% = 81.2%.

Subject to the requirements in Sections 4 and 7, the Secretariat will award the contract to the bidder whose Proposal achieves the highest total score.

6.              EXPLANATION OF PROCUREMENT PROCEDURE

• The Secretariat is using the Open Procedure for this procurement. This means that the contracting opportunity is published on the Secretariat’s website and open to all interested parties to take part, subject to the conditions in Section 7 below
  • You are welcome to ask questions or seek clarification regarding this procurement. Please email the Secretariat Contact (see Section 2), taking note of the deadline for submission of questions in Section 3.1.
  • All Proposals must be received by the submission deadline in Section 3.1 above. Late Proposals will not be considered. All Proposals received by the submission deadline will be evaluated by a team of three or more evaluators in accordance with the evaluation criteria stated in this RfP. No other criteria will be used to evaluate Proposals. The contract will be awarded to the bidder whose Proposal received the highest Total Score. The Secretariat does, however, reserve the right to cancel the procurement and not award a contract at all.
  • The Secretariat will contact the bidder with the highest-scoring Proposal to finalise the contract. We will contact unsuccessful bidders after the contract has been awarded. The timetable in Section 3.1 gives an estimate of when we expect to have completed the contract award, but this date may change depending on how long the evaluation of Proposals takes.

7.              CONDITIONS FOR PARTICIPATION IN THIS PROCUREMENT

• To participate in this procurement, you are required to submit a Proposal, which fully complies with the instructions in this RfP and the Attachments.
  • It is your responsibility to ensure that you have submitted a complete and fully compliant Proposal.

• Any incomplete or incorrectly completed Proposal submission may be deemed non- compliant, and as a result you may be unable to proceed further in the procurement process.
  • The Secretariat will query any obvious clerical errors in your Proposal and may, at the Secretariat’s sole discretion, allow you to correct these, but only if doing so could not be perceived as giving you an unfair advantage.
  • In order to participate in this procurement, you must meet the following conditions:
• Free of conflicts of interest
• Registered on the relevant professional or trade register of the country in which you are established (or resident, if self-employed)
• In full compliance with your obligations relating to payment of social security contributions and of all applicable taxes
• Not been convicted of failing to comply with environmental regulatory requirements or other legal requirements relating to sustainability and environmental protection
• Not bankrupt or being wound up
• Never been guilty of an offence concerning your professional conduct
• Not involved in fraud, corruption, a criminal organisation, money laundering, terrorism, or any other illegal activity.
  • You must complete and sign the Declaration of Undertaking (see Attachment 2).
  • If you are participating in this procurement as a member of a joint venture, or are using sub- contractors, submit a separate Declaration of Undertaking for each member of the joint venture and sub-contractor, and be clear in your Proposal which parts of the goods/services are provided by each partner or sub-contractor.
  • Each bidder shall submit only one Proposal, either individually or as a partner in a joint venture. In case of joint venture, one company shall not be allowed to participate in two different joint ventures in the same procurement nor shall a company be allowed to submit a Proposal both on its behalf and as part of a joint venture for the same procurement. A bidder who submits or participates in more than one Proposal (other than as a subcontractor or in cases of alternatives that have been permitted or requested) shall cause all the Proposals with the bidder’s participation to be disqualified.
  • By taking part in this procurement, you accept the conditions set out in this RfP, including the following:
• It is unacceptable to give or offer any gift or consideration to an employee or other representative of the Secretariat or IUCN as a reward or inducement in relation to the awarding of a contract. Such action will give the Secretariat the right to exclude you from this and any future procurements, and to terminate any contract that may have been signed with you.
• Any attempt to obtain information from an employee or other representative of the Secretariat or IUCN concerning another bidder will result in disqualification.
• Any price fixing or collusion with other bidders in relation to this procurement shall give the Secretariat the right to exclude you and any other involved bidder(s) from this and any future procurements and may constitute a criminal offence.

8.              CONFIDENTIALITY AND DATA PROTECTION

• The Secretariat follows the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The information you submit to the Secretariat as part of this procurement will be treated as confidential and shared only as required to evaluate your Proposal in line with the procedure explained in this RfP, and for the maintenance of a clear audit trail. For audit purposes, the Secretariat is required to retain your Proposal in its entirety for 10 years after then end of the

resulting contract and make this available to internal and external auditors and donors as and when requested.

• In the Declaration of Undertaking (Attachment 2) you need to give the Secretariat express permission to use the information you submit in this way, including personal data that forms part of your Proposal. Where you include personal data of your employees (e.g. CVs) in your Proposal, you need to have written permission from those individuals to share this information with the Secretariat, and for the Secretariat to use this information as indicated in 8.1. Without these permissions, the Secretariat will not be able to consider your Proposal.

9.              COMPLAINTS PROCEDURE

If you have a complaint or concern regarding the propriety of how a competitive process is or has been executed, then please contact procurement@iucn.org. Such complaints or concerns will be treated as confidential and are not considered in breach of the above restrictions on communication (Section 2.1).

10.           CONTRACT

The contract will be based on the Secretariat’s template in Attachment 3, the terms of which are not negotiable. They may, however, be amended by the Secretariat to reflect particular requirements from the donor funding this particular procurement.

11.           ABOUT THE CONVENTION ON WETLANDS

The Convention on Wetlands is an international treaty focused on wetlands. It provides a platform of 172 Contracting Parties (countries) working together for wetland conservation and sustainable use, and to develop the best available data, advice and policy recommendations to realize the benefits of fully functional wetlands to nature and society. Parties to the Convention have already committed to maintaining the ecological character of over 2,400 “Wetlands of International Importance” (or “Ramsar Sites”) covering more than 250 million hectares.

https://ramsar.org

12.           ATTACHMENTS

Attachment 1 Terms of Reference

Attachment 2 Declaration of Undertaking (select 2a for companies or 2b for self-employed as applicable to you)

Attachment 3 Contract Template