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How the University of Creative Arts used Framework 676 to improve efficiency and cover all services across their campuses
The requirement
In 2017, the University for the Creative Arts (UCA) needed to contract out its Hard Facilities and Water Hygiene Services as the previous contract was expiring.
The Hard Facilities and Water Hygiene services are essential to ensure that the Institution campus buildings are maintained to a high standard and provide a safe and compliant environment for staff, students, and visitors. The previous contract covered two of campuses. There was an intention to widen the coverage of the new contract to cover two other campuses in another county of the Southeast.
The two campuses were previously excluded from the previous tender in 2012 due to financial constraints at the time and these services have been provided to these campuses by means of multiple companies. This delivery model was fraught with challenges mainly in the area of resource spent in dealing with numerous services providers. Hence the Institution decided that the new Hard Facilities Services contract should include all campuses and cover all services and locations that were excluded in the 2012 tender. This was to align services thus achieving consistency of services, improving efficiency, and achieving value for money across all campuses.
In addition, there was a requirement that the services must be re-tendered to provide a new contract to meet Financial and Legislative Regulations.
As part of the Hard Facilities Services tender it was also decided to include Water Hygiene Services after two unsuccessful direct tendering processes in which the winning bidders could not provide the services for the costs that they had put forward in their bids.
The solution
ESPO was contacted and a further competition bid was carried out using the Total Facilities Management framework (676) as the framework agreement covered all the services that the Institution was looking to buy. The requirement of the institution stipulated that the services must be re-tendered to provide a new contract to meet Financial and Legislative Regulations. The further competition bid covered all the Institution’s locations and all Hard Facilities Services that were excluded in the 2012 tender to achieve the aim of consistency of service delivery model across all locations, improvement in efficiency and achievement of value for money. A further competition under ESPO Framework 676 was therefore launched in 2017.
The results
The tender was open to the eight suppliers under ESPO’s Total Facilities Management framework (676) agreement, however three suppliers registered on the framework agreement did not submit a bid. The bids submitted by the remaining five framework suppliers provided the institution sufficient opportunity to compare quality and cost proposals; and was able to appoint a supplier from the Lot. Out of the five tenders there were some strong bids but after evaluation one supplier scored higher in all the areas of tender assessments above the other bidders. The appointed supplier demonstrated their commitment in providing a collaborative and high standard of service in line with the detailed specifications and requirements of the Institution. In addition, their pricing bid and cost saving structure was highly competitive for the contract term.
Over the course of the contract, there has been changes in the Institutions property portfolio and the supplier has been adaptive to these variations. The performance of the supplier has been satisfactory which has led to an extension of the contract as per the terms of the framework agreement. The Institution did not have to expend resource for re-tendering for five years with plan for a re-tender in 2022.
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The Supplier has been committed to the institution in providing a collaborative and good standard of service. |
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| - Andy Iyaniwura, Head of Facilities Management |
To find out more about our Total Facilities Management framework (676) click here or contact the Managing Buildings team on place@espo.org.
