Procurement Services

The City of Abbotsford posts the majority of competitive goods and services opportunities over $75K and construction projects over $200K on posted on the BC Bid website. Competitive opportunity documents are distributed and responses are collected through a cloud base portal called Bonfire. 

The City of Abbotsford’s Council Policy C002-03, Purchasing, Equipment & Supplies describes how and when competitive bids are issued, approval authorization for purchases and contract execution and procedures.

The Procurement and Supply Services division is a support service for all City Divisions and a liaison between the vendor community and the City. We provide professional expertise in Procurement, Contracts and Supply Chain Management and ensure fair and transparent procurement processes are being followed.

Procurement assists in sourcing supplies, equipment and services to provide the City departments with best overall value and is authorized to issue contracts. The competitive bid process is managed in accordance with municipal guidelines, policies, legislated trade agreements and provincial laws.

Current & Awarded Opportunities

All current and closed opportunities can be found on the BC Bid Website. All documents relating to the opportunities can be found on the Abbotsford Bonfire Hub.

How We Award Opportunities

The City utilizes two main types of procurement competitions:

  1. Tender

    Tenders are generally for projects with very specific mandatory requirements and most often use a low price evaluation scale to award work (low price).

  2. Request for Proposal (RFP).

RFP’s often have less mandatory requirements and are evaluated on a number of criteria with less emphasis on price. There is more flexibility with RFP’s to negotiate and clarify items with proponents and no award is guaranteed until execution of a contract.  The RFP evaluation process includes a team of evaluators who conduct an individual evaluation and then come together to discuss their results and form a consensus scoring. For most projects the highest ranked proponent based on all of the disclosed criteria (outlined in the RFP), are awarded the work. In some cases a short list will be developed from the initial evaluation and those Proponents will be further evaluated through interviews or demos. 

Competition Results

All companies will be sent a formal letter of regret or award for competitive opportunities they have submitted a response to, once the appropriate approvals have been completed. Any Proponent is encouraged to request a debrief of their proposal by contacting the Procurement division. Debriefs will outline the areas of strengths and opportunities in the proposals and specific observations of the evaluation team. The intent of the debrief sessions are to assist Proponents to focus on areas of their Proposals that may be developed for future competitions.  

All annual current and awarded opportunities are posted above, on this webpage.

Vendor Community

Related Links

Abbotsford Bonfire Hub BC Bid Website