Motion picture and video services

Tender description

In the new year (approximately February/March 2020) the City of London Corporation plan to advertise an opportunity for a location agency contract that will enable the corporation to generate income from its estate by appointing an agency that will promote, manage and grow commercial filming at the Corporation’s buildings and open spaces. The Corporation plan to use a standard location agency financial model to facilitate the new contract provision. In practice the agency will retain an agreed percentage of the income generated in return for providing the location agency service. Bidders will be expected to provide some initial investment to mobilise the new service however these costs will be recoverable through retaining a higher percentage of income once annual targets have been achieved. In practice, we anticipate the agency will retain an estimated percentage of between 18 % and 25 % based on annual performance against income targets. The City of London Corporation are planning to run an Open OJEU tender process to procure a single supplier for the provision of filming location agency services over an initial 5-year period with the option to extend by up to a further 2 years. The Corporation manages filming across the public streets of the square mile including its city gardens and 5 bridges. In addition to this it manages 11 000 acres of open space and 3 large wholesale markets. It has 2 housing estates in the City and 10 other estates situated in 6 other London boroughs. Amongst other locations, the City Corporation looks after several schools, the Old Bailey, Mansion House, Guildhall, the London Metropolitan Archives and the Heathrow Animal Reception Centre. The City Surveyors department manages the City Corporation’s property portfolio and markets its empty office space. The current filming arrangement is that the Corporation does not actively promote its buildings and open spaces to film and TV productions and instead relies on the production companies to approach them. The City of London Film Office (COLFO) manage these enquiries for some departments but not all. The new contract will assist the COLFO by centralising this service whilst also providing a joined up, systematic approach to contract management, charges and risk mitigation moving forward. The high-level objectives of the service provider will include but not be limited to: — promoting the Corporation’s buildings and open spaces as filming locations to the film and TV production community, — assessing and calculating a rate card for each of the buildings and open spaces, — meeting or exceeding the Corporation’s filming income targets, — managing general location enquiries, recce requests, general questions and location bookings, — providing location information to the film and TV community such as availability, photographs, floor plans and asbestos reports, — ensuring that location bookings comply with the Corporation’s Filming Protocol, — managing the provision of chaperones to supervise filming when required, — engaging with and managing the relationship with local stakeholders at the buildings and open spaces, — assessing health and safety requirements to mitigate any risk to the Corporation, ensuring that appropriate risk assessments are completed by applicants, — assisting with identifying and promoting new locations as they become available, — minimising disruption to day to day business at the buildings and open spaces. The opportunity will be published via CapitalESourcing, where all City of London Corporation tender opportunities are published. CapitalEsourcing is an eSourcing solution, shared by the London Boroughs of Hammersmith and Fulham, Newham, Hillingdon, Havering, City of Westminster and the City of London Corporation for the purposes of releasing tender invitations and inviting suppliers to tender for the City of London. Suppliers who are interested in the opportunity will need to register with the website (https://www.capitalesourcing.com) in order to access the relevant documentation upon publication. If interested in the opportunity, suppliers are advised to sign up as soon as possible via the link below and notify Alex Mauger – Commercial Contract Manager, email: alex.mauger@cityoflondon.gov.uk when you have done so.