Computer equipment and supplies

Tender description

Extraordinary circumstances for the provisions of laptop computers. The purchase is for a total of 580 HP laptops. These are being sourced with a combination of immediate delivery (190 units) and delivery within a few days (the balance of the order). The urgent requirement will enable the University to facilitate agile and home working in response to the Covid-19 outbreak. This is a contract award notice for 580 new laptops. The award is being conducted under Regulation 32. (2) (c) 'Use of the negotiated procedure without prior publication'. Due to the critical and unforeseen nature of the current Covid-19 outbreak, the University is taking measures to safeguard its students and staff. As part of the incident management and business continuity processes, remote working is being implemented across the workforce. To enable this the University immediately requires more laptops, which are in very short supply across the supply market due to both a surge in demand and pre-existing production problems at major OEMs. Laptops are therefore urgently needed for both staff (to enable remote working for an extended period) and students (some students do not have appropriate devices given that all teaching is now being delivered online). Whilst the University already has an existing compliant contract for laptops (by means of a further competition), this cannot be used to fulfil this urgent order. Lead times of 6 weeks are being quoted and the University already has back-orders in place on the current contract. This can be seen across the industry with manufacturers facing delays due to the lack of availability of Intel’s processor chips, which are an essential component. The supplier has been able to offer large quantities of their current in-stock items. The decision to purchase these devices has been agreed by the University’s Incident Management Team which has convened in response to Covid-19’s impact. The aim is to enable more agile/home working during the Covid-19 outbreak and to comply with government regulations. The purchase is therefore time limited, due to the short supply. Please see annex d for further details