To bid on tenders financed by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), you need one thing first: a free account on ECEPP, the EBRD Client E-Procurement Portal, at ecepp.ebrd.com. Under the EBRD's Procurement Policies and Rules (the version dated 15 May 2022, currently in force), the bank's public-sector clients must use the portal mandated by the bank for their tendering unless the bank agrees otherwise — which means, in practice, that procurement notices, tender documents, clarifications, submissions and award notifications for EBRD-financed public contracts all flow through ECEPP. Registration is free for suppliers, contractors and consultants; there is no paid tier and no intermediary is required.
This guide describes the process as FORLOG AG uses it — we monitor ECEPP daily and deliver EBRD-financed assignments in the Kyrgyz Republic and across Central Asia.
What ECEPP is (and is not)
ECEPP is the client-side tendering portal for EBRD-financed projects. The purchasers are not the EBRD itself but its borrowers — municipalities, utilities, ministries and state enterprises. The EBRD sets the rules (its Procurement Policies and Rules, "PP&R"), reviews key steps, and hosts the portal; the client runs the procurement.
ECEPP is not where the EBRD buys goods and services for its own offices (that is the bank's separate corporate procurement), and it is not a tender aggregator — everything on it is a genuine EBRD-financed opportunity, published free. If a third-party site asks you to pay for access to "EBRD tenders", you are paying for a copy of what ECEPP publishes at no cost.
Step 1 — Register
Go to ecepp.ebrd.com and create a company profile. You will provide basic corporate details (legal name, country of registration, contact persons) and select the business sectors and countries you want to be notified about. Registration is self-service and free; approval is not a vetting process — eligibility is assessed per tender, not at registration.
Practical points from regular use:
- Register the legal entity that will actually sign contracts. Consortium partners each register separately; the lead member submits.
- Keep more than one user attached to the company account. Deadlines do not move because your single account holder is on leave.
- Set the notification profile wider than your core business at first, then narrow it. Sector taxonomies never match your own labels exactly, and a too-narrow profile is the most common reason firms miss relevant notices.
Step 2 — Find opportunities
There are three layers of notice to understand:
- General Procurement Notice (GPN) — announces a project's overall procurement programme, early. This is your market-intelligence layer: a GPN for, say, a solid waste project in the Kyrgyz Republic tells you roughly what contracts (works, goods, consultancy) will follow.
- Specific Procurement Notice / Invitation to Tender — announces an individual contract and opens the competition for works and goods.
- Consultancy procurement notices — announce consulting assignments, usually inviting expressions of interest for shortlisting.
All are searchable on ECEPP without logging in; the account adds saved searches and email alerts. FORLOG's own pipeline in Central Asia is built on daily review of these alerts — the interval between a GPN and the tender itself is where positioning, teaming and bid/no-bid decisions happen. By the time the tender is out, well-prepared bidders have been expecting it for months.
Step 3 — Express interest / participate
For consultancy assignments, the standard sequence under the PP&R 2022 is: the client publishes the assignment on ECEPP; interested firms submit expressions of interest through the portal; the client shortlists no fewer than three and no more than six qualified firms (a different number requires justification and the bank's no-objection); only shortlisted firms are invited to submit proposals.
Evaluation of consultant proposals under the EBRD rules is principally quality-based: past relevant experience, the qualifications of key experts, and the methodology and work plan carry the evaluation, with price as a possible — but secondary — consideration, applied through disclosed weightings or merit points. The highest-ranked proposal is the most economically advantageous. This differs from the World Bank's QCBS default, where the price formula is fixed; under EBRD rules, read each tender's evaluation section carefully rather than assuming a standard ratio. (For the World Bank and ADB approach, see our explainer QCBS Explained.)
For works and goods, you download the tender documents from ECEPP, submit clarification questions through the portal (answers are circulated to all bidders), and upload your tender before the deadline. EBRD standard tender documents incorporate internationally accepted contract conditions — for works, contract terms based on the FIDIC Red Book 2017 (as reprinted 2022), which the EBRD is licensed to use across its standard documents.
Step 4 — Submission discipline
The portal enforces deadlines to the minute, and the failure modes are boringly consistent:
- Upload early. Large technical proposals plus slow connections plus a 15:00 Bishkek deadline is a known disaster pattern. Complete uploads a day ahead; you can replace files until the deadline.
- Answer what is asked. Consultancy EoIs are scored against the notice's stated criteria. Generic brochures lose to short, criterion-mapped submissions.
- Check signatures and securities. For works tenders, a defective bid security or missing authorisation is grounds for rejection regardless of price.
- Mind conflict-of-interest rules. A firm (or its affiliate) that prepared a project's design or feasibility study is generally barred from bidding on the resulting works — the EBRD's rules on prohibited practices and conflicts of interest are enforced, and the bank can reject tenders and debar firms.
What happens after you submit
The client evaluates; award decisions on covered contracts are subject to the EBRD's review and no-objection at the steps set out in the PP&R. Award information is published, and unsuccessful bidders can request feedback. If you believe a process was flawed, complaints go first to the client, with escalation routes to the bank — document concerns contemporaneously, not after the award.
FAQ
Does ECEPP registration cost anything?
No. Registration and access to all notices and tender documents are free. Paid "tender alert" services resell what ECEPP publishes openly.
Do I need to be registered before a tender is published to participate?
No — you can register at any time. But since shortlists for consultancy work are built from expressions of interest submitted within the notice deadline, discovering an assignment late is as bad as being ineligible. Set alerts.
Can a foreign firm bid without a local partner?
Under EBRD open tendering there is no general requirement for a local partner. In practice, local partners matter for delivery — language (tender documents in Central Asia are often issued in English and Russian), local design norms, and site presence. Teaming decisions should be driven by the evaluation criteria and the scope, not by a mistaken belief that a local intermediary is mandatory.
What rules govern the tender — the EBRD's or the country's?
For EBRD-financed public contracts, the EBRD's Procurement Policies and Rules (May 2022) govern, implemented through the bank's standard tender documents. National procurement law applies to nationally funded contracts — a distinction that tender aggregators routinely blur.
How long does an EBRD tender process take?
From GPN to contract signature on a works contract, plan in months, not weeks. On the EBRD-financed Yavan tender in Tajikistan, the rules then in force required at least 45 days between the general procurement notice and the invitation to tender alone; add the bidding window, evaluation, no-objection and award. Consultancy selections are faster but still routinely run a quarter or more.
Where can I see a real example of EBRD tendering mechanics?
Our case study of the Yavan Solid Waste Project walks through an EBRD-financed open tender in Tajikistan — structure of the tender document, qualification criteria, securities, and conflict-of-interest rules — and our Osh Solid Waste Project case study shows the consultant's side of preparing tenders for EBRD no-objection.
FORLOG AG is a Swiss consultancy, established in 1997, that prepares, manages and supervises EBRD-financed infrastructure projects in Central Asia — including procurement and implementation support on the Osh Solid Waste Project (EBRD Project ID 42471) and the Electricity Supply Digitalization Project in the Kyrgyz Republic. If you are considering an EBRD tender and want an experienced review of the opportunity, contact us.