The purpose of the present study was to develop the acquisition of the planning services of HelenOutdoorlighting by putting out a tender. The main theoretical framework of the study focused on the laws and regulations concerning public procurement, as well as on benchmarking and SWOT-analysis.

This development project was carried out as an action research. The project began by a present state analysis, which consisted of the following steps: data mining the IT-systems for all the needed data about annual costs of procurements for planning services, interviewing the staff of HelenOutdoorlighting and making a SWOT-analysis to find out the development target`s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

The present state analysis indicated clearly how the procurement process should be developed as well what aspects should be considered in the tendering process. Benchmarking was used to identify the best practices and create a clear vision for the final tender.

In the first phase of the public procurement only half of the contenders met the strictly set terms to take part in the tender. The selection criterion of the tender was a total economic affordability and the evaluation criteria were chosen after careful research. In the tenders’ final comparison, the price ratio was 40 % and the quality ratio was 60 %. The quality comparison included the references of the staff and the work group and also their organizational skills and quality management control. The weighted price comparison took into account the hourly charged prices for the different price categories of the planning organization.

As a result of the tender, HelenOutdoorlighting got the two most suitable partners for planning. HelenOutdoorlighting also got a useful model for putting out to tender the needed planning services in the future.