Last updated: 8/1/24

City of Boston Buying Plan

The Buying Plan is an annual forecast of what the City of Boston plans to purchase.

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The Buying Plan provides a look into upcoming, planned procurement and contracting opportunities. This is based on a list of goods and services that City Departments plan to purchase in the future, but have not advertised or published bid documents for. The list will be updated on a recurring basis. The Buying Plan will reflect the City's most up-to-date plans for purchasing.

If you see a procurement you are interested in learning more about, please contact buying@boston.gov.

To view current, active procurement opportunities, please visit the Bids and RFPs page.

About the plan

What'S IN THE Buying Plan?

Currently, the Buying Plan includes:

Procurement opportunities by City department
Industry type for each procurement opportunity (such as Construction, Services, or Goods & Supplies)
Estimated advertisement date of the procurement
Estimated dollar amounts of the procurement opportunity
Brief description of each procurement

The Buying Plan includes a sample of planned procurement opportunities that City departments plan to release in the next year. While it does not currently include procurements from all departments, it is intended to give a broad sense of the goods and services we are planning to purchase, but have not advertised or published bid documents for. We will continue to add opportunities over the coming months as more information becomes available.

The purpose of sharing this information about the goods or services we’re planning to buy and our estimated budget is to better inform interested businesses and existing suppliers about upcoming opportunities so they can more easily plan to submit a bid, proposal, or quote.

Please note that the City may choose to procure some, all, or none of the goods and services listed here. We may also choose to procure goods and services not listed here, or at a different price than we estimated here.

HOW CAN YOU USE THE BUYING PLAN?

Each row of the Buying Plan represents an upcoming procurement. By default, procurements are grouped by City departments. You can use the group, sort, and filter features on the top ribbon to find procurements that are relevant to you.

For example, you could group procurements by UNSPSC code to see procurements by their standard product or service category. You could then sort by Estimated Procurement Date to see when procurements of a given category may be advertised. You can also print the Buying Plan or download its contents by clicking “Print view” or “Download CSV”.

If you see a procurement you are interested in learning more about, please contact buying@boston.gov.

WHO'S IT FOR?

The Buying Plan is meant primarily for businesses and suppliers. We want to help inform them about upcoming contracting opportunities.

The Buying Plan is also part of Mayor Wu's broader commitment to equitable procurement and supplier diversity. Our goal is to allow for more transparency into the City's procurement process. We want small, minority-owned, and women-owned businesses to be able to find and compete for more City contracts.

HOW CAN YOU HELP US IMPROVE?

We’re interested in hearing from you about how we can make the Buying Plan better. For feedback on the Buying Plan, please reach out to buying@boston.gov.

VIEW THE BUYING PLAN

Some procurements have an Estimated Procurement Date listed as “*Before July 2024”. These procurements may have already been advertised. For all information on current, active procurements or previous procurements, visit the bid listings page.

You can use Airtable to view a fullscreen version of the Buying Plan.

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