Finland is on the hunt for interpreting providers. The cities of Vantaa, Helsinki, and Kerava, along with the hospital districts of Helsinki and Uusimaa, banded together to procure interpreting services. The result, a tender worth up to EUR 35.6m (USD 41.1m) launched in late September 2021.
The sizable tender is broken down into two lots — the first covering onsite interpreting and “special group interpreting”; the second, remote interpreting.
The first lot, for onsite interpreting, is estimated to reach EUR 5.5m (USD 6.4m) over two years. The remote interpreting lot, significantly bigger, has an estimated value of EUR 30.1m (USD 34.8m) with the same duration.
The published contract values are estimates based on previous years, the notice pointed out, and do not commit the contracting authorities to a particular level of spending. The estimated value of the lots are broken down by city or contracting authority in the chart below.
Both lots may also require that the supplier provide training services relating to interpreting, which will be contracted and ordered separately by a particular contracting authority.
The contract, expected to commence on January 1, 2022, is for an initial two years (fixed), “after which it will continue for an indefinite period.” As part of the tender response, bidders are required to provide details of the names and professional qualifications of the staff working on the contract.
Pro Guide: Translation Pricing and Procurement
Unlike a number of other large public sector interpreting contracts, which are frameworks involving multiple suppliers that may or may not be called upon once the contract goes live, the Finnish tender seeks to award only one supplier for each lot.
In doing so, it follows tenders from the likes of Sweden, which announced in May 2021 that it was looking for one vendor to provide interpretation services for the entire Stockholm Region as part of a four-year EUR 59m onsite, remote, and on-demand interpreting contract.
Interested parties are invited to submit their tender responses electronically in Finnish to the Finnish procurement service by November 4, 2021.
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