A Professional Services contract is not governed by the lowest, responsible bidder requirements of Section 8-200 of the Home Rule Charter. These contracts are subject to the requirements found in Chapter 17-1400 of the Philadelphia Code and may be awarded based upon a number of criteria, including price. Other requirements of Chapter 17-1400 include (but are not limited to):
Examples of Professional Services include but are not limited to: social services, information technology consulting, legal services, general consulting services and marketing or communications.
While Professional Services contracts are called “non-competitively bid” contracts in the Philadelphia Code, most of these contracts must undergo an open and competitive process before they can be awarded, as required by law.
Snow removal is considered a non-professional service. Data on contracts for supplies and equipment, non-professional services, and construction is currently not included on this site but will be provided at a later date. If you’d like to find out more information about these types of contracts, you may visit the Procurement Department’s website or contact their Customer Service Unit at bid.info@phila.gov or 215-686-4720.
Community Behavioral Health (CBH) is a nonprofit, 501c (3) corporation created by the City of Philadelphia as a behavioral health Medicaid managed care organization. CBH contracts with agencies or independent practitioners to provide mental health and substance abuse services to Medicaid-covered adults, children, and adolescents. CBH’s focus is to ensure that Philadelphia residents with mental health and substance abuse needs receive the most appropriate and effective treatment in the least restrictive and most cost-efficient setting. For this reason, the contract with Community Behavioral Health is one of the City’s largest contracts annually.
A Unitary Contract is one contract arrangement with multiple entities. The purpose is to provide similar services for similar pricing with multiple entities under one contract, as opposed to entering into separate and distinct contracts with each entity. Unitary Contracts allow the contracting department to easily move funds from one entity to another on the Unitary when the need arises. These contracts are frequently utilized to provide social services, as there is often a need to quickly shift clients and funds from one provider to another throughout a fiscal year without having to amend the contract each time, as long as, the total compensation to all providers does not exceed the overall contract amount for the Unitary. When the term Unitary is presented as a vendor name, this represents multiple vendors under the contract. We are unable to display the names of all vendors under each Unitary contract on this website – however, you can find the names of the vendors on all Unitary contracts by visiting the Reports section of the eContract Philly website and selecting the most recent quarterly report.
If you would like to request a copy of any of the contracts found on this site or any other contract, please submit a Right to Know request to obtain that information. You may contact the Right to Know Officer in the contracting department to obtain the requested information. More information on how to submit a Right to Know request can be found here.
On the eContract Philly website, you can search and apply for Professional Services contract opportunities, including the ability to view the Request for Proposals for open contract opportunities. You can also find information on who the City intends to enter into contracts, including the reasons for selecting particular Applicants, view the disclosure forms submitted by Applicants, view renewal certifications and some information about contract amendments, and view other public reports on contract activity. If you are unable to find what you are looking for on the site, please contact the eContract Philly helpline at econtractphilly@phila.gov or 215-686-4914.
At times, we must use acronyms or abbreviations when inputting contract data into the City’s main contracting databases. You may also find that some of the department names may not reflect the current department names (ex: Division of Technology is now the Office of Innovation and Technology).
The following is a list of some of the acronyms and abbreviations found on the site and their meanings:
We welcome your comments and feedback on how we can make this website most useful to the public. Please contact the Office of the Chief Integrity Officer with your comments at integrity@phila.gov.
