Innovative procurement through competitive dialogue: Opportunities and solving the pitfalls By Rich Yehia Special to Canadian Design and Construction Report In order to adapt to the changing needs of the marketplace, innovative procurement processes are emerging within the complex framework of the current judicial consideration of pro- curement issues. One such innovative process is “competitive dialogue” whereby a procuring authority devel- ops an outline for its project require- ments and tasks the responding proponents with developing their own unique proposals to meet the needs of the project. Proposals can take on a variety of forms with the only limitation being the project requirements. After proposals are received, there is a well-defined prescribed process to enable each pro- ponent with a viable proposal to go through a confidential negotiation process with respect to their proposal. After negotiations, the proponents then submit a best and final proposal. The proposal that best fits the need of the procurement authority is selected. While there are certainly situations where other procurement methods may be more appropriate, conceptu- ally, competitive dialogue appears to have great potential to provide a new, strategic, and innovative means for procurement in certain circumstances. However, given the limited experience with competitive dialogue in Canada, and the relatively recent application in Europe, there are risks that need to be carefully considered and managed. One significant consideration with competitive dialogue is to ensure the procurement process does not offend 10 – November 2015 — The Canadian Design and Construction Report legal restrictions with respect to bid shopping. Bid shopping is essentially where a tendering authority uses bids submitted primarily as a negotiating tool. At first blush, it would appear dif- ficult to reconcile the avoidance of al- legations of bid shopping with a negotiated procurement process. However, a competitive dialogue process is more nuanced and appropri- ate safeguards can be built into the in- structions to bidders to keep confidential the negotiations and bid- der information to minimize any such risk. Another consideration, at least for public sector institutions, is the appli- cable procurement directives that must be adhered to in any procurement. One imposition imposed by such directives may be the need for a procurement to include standardized evaluation crite-