Three DoE manuals in 2025: Works, Consultancy and Non-Consultancy Services

What was published, and when

The Department of Expenditure's manuals index is where the current editions are listed, and three of the four now carry a 2025 date: the Manual for Procurement of Consultancy Services, Second Edition, 2025 and the Manual for Procurement of Non-Consultancy Services, 2025, both listed on 18 August 2025, and the Manual for Procurement of Works, Second Edition, 2025, listed on 5 January 2026. The fourth is the Manual for Procurement of Goods, Second Edition, 2024.

One correction has been issued since. An office memorandum of 18 June 2026, No.F.3/9/2026-PPD, makes “the following corrections... in the Manual for Procurement of Works (Second Edition, 2025)”: two cross-references to the Goods manual, one in para 3.5.2 and one in para 6.5.1-2, and nothing else. A copy downloaded in January is otherwise current.

On this site the 2025 editions are quoted on the rules, how procurement works, money in a bid and before you can bid.

The order each preface sets

A manual is the Department's guidance on applying the rules, and each new edition says where it stands. The consultancy manual's preface: “This Manual adheres to the relevant laws, GFR, and clarifications/ OMs issued by the Procurement Policy Division... up to April 2025. In case of inconsistencies between this Manual and prevailing law or GFR, the extant law and GFR shall prevail.”Department of Expenditure, Ministry of FinanceThe non-consultancy manual carries the same sentence.

Two things follow for a bidder. A manual paragraph never beats the rule it explains: Rule 171(i) on performance security was amended by an office memorandum of 1 January 2024, and it is the rule as amended that governs. And a manual is current only to the memoranda of April 2025, so a later order is read beside it.

Works, second edition

The Works Manual's foreword says it “incorporates significant policy changes since its first edition in 2019 (updated in 2022)”. The 2019 edition is still online and its paragraph numbers are still quoted in older templates, so a works paragraph is worth checking against the edition it came from.

Its scope is stated in the same foreword: the manual “is intended primarily for Ministries and Departments with limited in house engineering capacity, providing broad procedural guidance for small repair works up to 60 lakh, and for procurement of larger works through the agency of Public Works Organisations (PWO) or Public Works CPSEs”. A contractor working for such a body therefore meets its own book first.

What the edition carries for a bidder is the familiar apparatus: bid security and the declaration that may stand in its place at para 5.1.1, the qualification attributes at para 3.9.1, and performance security with retention under Rule 171. Each of those figures is stated once on this site: the bid-security band and the declaration on EMD exemptions, turnover, similar work and available bid capacity on similar work and turnover, and when each sum comes back on money in a bid.

Consultancy, second edition

The consultancy manual replaces the 2017 manual for consultancy and other services. Its para 4.2(3) names the four selection methods a consultant meets: “a) Price based System - Least Cost Selection (LCS); b) Quality and Cost Based Selection (QCBS); c) Fixed Budget based Selection (FBS) d) Direct Selection: Single Source Selection (SSS).”Department of Expenditure, Ministry of FinanceThe qualifying technical benchmark and the suggestive weightings for QCBS under Rule 192 are on how the winner is chosen.

Non-Consultancy Services, a first edition

This is the edition a firm may not know exists. Outsourced services (security, housekeeping, transport, operation and maintenance) were a chapter of the consultancy manual and now have a manual of their own, matching the non-consulting service rules. Rule 206 draws the boundary: anything those rules do not cover sends the buyer to “Rule 142 to Rule 176 pertaining to procurement of goods and not to the procurement of consulting services”.

For a manpower or facility-management contractor that is the practical change: the book describing how the buyer runs the tender is now a book about that kind of contract.

The 2024 Goods manual they sit beside

The goods manual was not reissued with them. The Second Edition of 2024 stands, and its own foreword records that the earlier manuals for goods, works and services were published “in 2017/ 2019 (later updated in 2022)”. The Central Vigilance Commission mirrors the Department's set on its public procurement manuals page, listing the goods manual there under a July 2024 date.

What a bidder re-reads

This is general information; confirm with the tender document and your adviser.

Three things follow from the editions themselves. A template that cites a manual paragraph by number (a qualification annexure copied from a 2019 works document, a services clause taken from the old consultancy manual) may now point at a paragraph that has moved or a book that no longer covers the subject. A security, housekeeping, transport or maintenance contract is read against its own manual now, not the consultancy one. And the date on the face of a downloaded copy matters: the Works manual of 2025 was corrected in June 2026, and every manual is current only to the memoranda of April 2025, so the rule and the later orders settle anything the manual leaves in doubt.

The order of authority (law, the rules, the manual, the tender document) is on the rules.