1.Technical and professional capacity of economic operators shall be evaluated and verified in accordance with paragraphs 2 and 3. In procurement procedures for supplies requiring siting or installation operations, services and/or works, such capacity shall be assessed with regard in particular to their know-how, efficiency, experience and reliability.
2.Evidence of the technical and professional capacity of economic operators may, depending on the nature, quantity or scale and purpose of the supplies, services or works to be provided, be furnished on the basis of one or more of the following documents:
(a)the educational and professional qualifications of the service provider or work contractor and/or those of the firm’s managerial staff and, in particular, those of the person or persons responsible for providing the services or carrying out the works;
(b)a list:
of the principal services provided and supplies delivered in the past three years, with the sums, dates and recipients, public or private;
of the works carried out in the last five years, with the sums, dates and place;
(c)a description of the technical equipment, tools and plant to be employed by the firm for performing a service or works contract;
(d)a description of the technical equipment and the measures employed to ensure the quality of supplies and services, and a description of the firm’s study and research facilities;
(e)an indication of the technicians or technical bodies involved, whether or not belonging directly to the firm, especially those responsible for quality control;
(f)in respect of supplies: samples, descriptions and/or authentic photographs and/or certificates drawn up by official quality control institutes or agencies of recognised competence attesting the conformity of the products with the specifications or standards in force;
(g)a statement of the average annual manpower and the number of managerial staff of the service provider or work contractor in the last three years;
(h)an indication of the proportion of the contract which the service provider may intend to subcontract;
(i)for public works contracts and public service contracts, and only in appropriate cases, an indication of the environmental management measures that the economic operator will be able to apply when performing the contract.
Where the services or supplies referred to in point (b)(i) of the first subparagraph are provided to contracting authorities, evidence of performance shall be in the form of certificates issued or countersigned by the competent authority.
For the purposes of point (b)(ii) of the first subparagraph the list of the most important works shall be accompanied by certificates of satisfactory execution, specifying whether they have been carried out in a professional manner and have been fully completed.
3.Where the services or products to be supplied are complex or, exceptionally, are required for a special purpose, evidence of technical and professional capacity may be secured by means of a check carried out by the contracting authority or on its behalf by a competent official body of the country in which the service provider or supplier is established, subject to that body’s agreement. Such checks shall concern the supplier’s technical capacity and production capacity and, if necessary, its study and research facilities and quality control measures.
4.Where contracting authorities require the production of certificates drawn up by independent bodies attesting the compliance of the economic operator with certain quality assurance standards, they shall refer to quality assurance systems based on the relevant European standards series certified by accredited bodies. However, contracting authorities shall also accept other evidence of equivalent quality assurance measures from economic operators that have no access to such certificates, or no possibility of obtaining them within the relevant time limits.
5.Where contracting authorities require the production of certificates drawn up by independent bodies attesting that the economic operator complies with certain environmental management schemes or standards, they shall refer to the European Union Eco-Management and Audit Scheme or to other environmental management schemes as recognised in accordance with Article 45 of Regulation (EC) No 1221/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council(1) or other environmental management standards based on the relevant European or international standards by accredited bodies. They shall recognise equivalent certificates from bodies established in other Member States. They shall also accept other evidence of equivalent environmental management measures from economic operators.
6.An economic operator may, where appropriate and for a particular contract, rely on the capacities of other entities, regardless of the legal nature of the links which it has with them. It must in that case prove to the contracting authority that it will have at its disposal the resources necessary for performance of the contract, for example by producing an undertaking on the part of those entities to place those resources at its disposal.
Under the same conditions, a consortium of economic operators as referred to in Article 121(5) may rely on the capacities of members of the consortium or of other entities.
7.In the case of works contracts, service contracts and siting and installation operations in the context of a supply contract, the contracting authority may require that certain critical tasks be performed directly by the tenderer itself or, where a tender is submitted by a consortium of economic operators as referred to in Article 121(6), a participant in the consortium.
8.Contracting authorities may conclude that economic operators will not perform the contract to an appropriate quality standard where the contracting authority establishes that they have conflicting interests which may negatively affect the performance of the contract.