Venicecom provides Public Administrations and Public Bodies, through the PRO-Q platform, with software designed to better manage all the different phases of the goods and services procurement process. The platform is a fundamental tool that simplifies the activities of contracting stations and enables them to easily organize tenders and conclude supply contracts while obtaining the most competitive price possible, but its benefits do not stop there.
In fact, by choosing to use our services, client entities have the opportunity to simplify additional aspects of contract awarding procedures, such as verifying the requirements of those participating in the tender process. The onus of these checks, provided for in Article 80 of the Public Contracts Code (Legislative Decree 50/2016), falls on the operator organizing the tender, who is required to verify that all potential suppliers meet the requirements of the law and that there are no grounds for exclusion that prevent their participation in the tender.
In order to simplify this aspect of the business and ensure that public agencies are always operating correctly and in full compliance with regulations, we have organized our Supplier Verification service under Art. 80.
Art. 80 audits: what they are and what obligations they entail
The current regulations require that all operators who intend to participate in tenders for the supply of goods and services to Public Entities must meet precise requirements, established by law, and that the obligation to verify the existence of these requirements falls on the contracting station.
Potential suppliers, in particular, must declare that they do not fall into any of the exclusion categories in the Public Contracts Code in order to participate in the tender. According to the regulations, for example, all companies in which individuals who hold representative roles should be excluded:
- Have criminal convictions for some specific crimes (criminal conspiracy, bribery, bid rigging, money laundering…) specified in the first paragraph of Art. 80 of the Procurement Code
- Have committed violations of anti-mafia regulations
- Have committed serious and definitively established violations relating to obligations to pay taxes, fees or contributions
- Have committed serious and definitively established violations of occupational health and safety regulations
- Have committed professional misconduct such that the integrity or reliability of the economic operator for whom they work is in doubt
This list, which is not exhaustive, shows how complex the requirements verification activity is. In order to carry out the necessary checks, in fact, the contracting station must collect appropriate certifications issued by various entities in charge (Criminal Records Office, National Anti-Mafia Data Bank, Agenzia delle Entrate, ANAC’s Computer Records Office, INPS and INAIL…), verifying the position of all persons who hold corporate offices within the company applying to be a supplier, as well as all those who have held such offices in the year preceding the date of publication of the tender notice. To carry out these checks ANAC provides AVCPASS, however this tool cannot be used in cases of subcontracting and sub-threshold awards. Moreover, these are increasingly common situations in light of the new provisions contained in the New Simplification Decree No. 77/2021 (converted by Law No. 108/2021).
These verification activities are, in addition to being very complex, also extremely time-consuming, because it is necessary to wait for various responses from individual certifying bodies and to check that you are in possession of the entire documentation before proceeding with the verification of requirements. Verification can take several weeks, and it is a step that cannot be circumvented: for this reason, outsourcing the entire process to an external partner is a win-win solution that simplifies the Entity’s work.
Venicecom’s Supplier Verification service under Art. 80
Thanks to our Supplier Verification service, it is possible to automate the verification procedures, avoiding the need to manage the process manually by sending and receiving individual PECs that must then be archived. Both in cases where the station has the credentials to use ANAC’s AVCPASS application, and in cases where the contracting station cannot use the application or manages procedures below the €40,000 threshold, PRO-Q makes it possible, through a special form, to automate the compilation of the various requests and to send and receive the related communications without the need for manual intervention by the operator.
In addition, the various documents, once received and used, can be stored in the application, which not only stores them but also keeps track of their validity period. Certifications, in fact, once issued remain valid for a period of 6 months (4 months in the case of DURC), and thus in case of need can be reused without the need to ask the various certifying bodies for a new issuance. When they expire, the form communicates directly with the platform signaling that the certifications are no longer valid, thus avoiding errors and possible omissions.
The Supplier Verification Service ex Art. 80 allows Public Entities to operate with greater guarantees and protections and gives them the possibility of constantly tracking the controls carried out and the activities performed, in full compliance with privacy regulations and counting on a high level of security in data management: if you want to know more, contact us now: our specialized consultants will illustrate the full potential of this service.
