Part 3: Award of public contracts and procedures Chapter 1: Preliminary steps Section 16: Preliminary market engagement
Subsection (1) permits contracting authorities to engage with suppliers and other persons (e.g. trade associations, consultants, think tanks, charities) before commencing a procurement and lists the purpose of such engagement (e.g. for developing contracting authority requirements or designing a procurement process).
	Subsection (2) explains that the engagement described in subsection (1) is called preliminary market engagement.
	Subsection (3) requires contracting authorities to ensure that suppliers involved in the preliminary market engagement do not later receive an unfair advantage over those suppliers not involved, and that the competition that follows the preliminary market engagement is not distorted by the engagement.
	Subsection (4) sets out the circumstances in which a supplier is to be treated as an "excluded supplier" (i.e. requiring the contracting authority to exclude them from the procurement) under subsection (5). This applies where they have an unfair advantage in the procurement, due to taking part in preliminary market engagement and that advantage cannot be avoided (e.g. by taking measures later to correct any advantage, such as giving all suppliers the same information).
	Subsection (5) requires contracting authorities to treat a supplier that has been given an unfair advantage through their participation in preliminary market engagement which cannot be avoided as an "excluded supplier". This does not mean that the supplier is an excluded supplier for all procurements (unlike in other circumstances set out in section 57 and Schedule 6) but only for this procurement, with the result that the other provisions relating to "excluded suppliers" do not apply to the supplier. This means that the risk of the circumstances recurring or continuing (otherwise known as "self-cleaning") does not need to be considered, the time periods during which events can be taken into account for the purpose of exclusions are not applicable and this cannot be used as a ground for a Minister to put the supplier on the debarment list.