Project management and procurement support
for cantonal IT projects.
01 · Starting point
The cantonal administration awards IT projects through formal procurement procedures. A specialist need and a document fit for tender are two different texts. One describes what somebody needs. The other has to be written so that a supplier can price against it. The translation between the two is the actual work.
02 · Challenge
An award procedure is legally bound and open to public review. Requirements have to stay supplier-neutral and still meet the real need; evaluations have to be defensible months later towards a bidder who lost. And the schedule is rarely negotiable, because budget processes and political dates hang on it. On top of that: what is missing from the specification is missing from the contract afterwards — and from the system after that.
03 · What we do
Project management following HERMES 5, in the roles, phases and deliverables the canton knows and reviews — depending on the project: gathering requirements with the specialist units, sharpening them, having them signed off; producing the tender documents with specification, suitability and award criteria and a scoring matrix; answering bidders' questions and evaluating offers traceably; preparing the award decision and representing it in the steering committee — and then running the project itself.
04 · Where it stands
The mandate has been running since July 2025 — across several projects.
Methodical foundations
What we took away
A specification is an instrument of comparison. The more precisely it describes what is needed, the better the offers can be weighed against each other — and the less often the question comes up at the end whether the same thing was even being offered.
More is decided before the tender than after it. What stands in the specification has been negotiated. What is missing becomes a change request after the award — with everything that means under public procurement law. That is why the weight of this mandate lies in the preparation: clarify the need before it goes out to tender.
Is a procurement coming up on your side?
Half an hour is enough for a first assessment: which procedure fits, where the risks are and how much lead time is realistic.
Discuss the procurement→