Road transport services

Tender description

In early May 2020, the Department for Transport (‘DfT’) announced its intention to start trials of rental e-Scooters, to help support cities across the United Kingdom as part of their restart and recovery response following the Coronavirus-induced lockdown. DfT has demonstrated its preference for coordination of trials at a local level. Transport for London (‘TfL’) has therefore been working with London Councils as representative for the 32 London boroughs and the City of London Corporation (the ‘Boroughs’) with the intent to administer, coordinate and evaluate with the potential for all Boroughs in Greater London to participate. By coordinating efforts, TfL and the Boroughs can: (i) drive a consistent and safe trial standard across London; (ii) provide an evidence base for TfL and the Borough’s own policy position on the e-Scooters and DfT’s research to inform possible changes to legislation regarding e-Scooters; and (iii) provide an alternative transport option. This is a competitive procurement for the award of a contract(s) to operator(s) in relation to an electric scooters (‘e-Scooters’) trial in London (‘Trial’). The procurement is being conducted pursuant to the research and development services exemption under regulation 14 of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 (‘PCR 2015’). At the end of this procurement process, TfL may choose to award contract(s) and enter into an Administration Agreement (‘Agreement’) with each operator, setting out the terms that apply to the operator and those authorities in the Greater London area who wish to participate in the Trial, being TfL itself, various London Boroughs and the City of London Corporation. The agreement provides that a participating borough may issue a notice to require the relevant operator(s) to enter into a contract for the provision of e-Scooter rental services in the geographic area controlled by that participating borough. Participating boroughs may choose to enter a full-service contract for the provision of an e-Scooter rental service or to allow e-scooters to be ridden through only (Ride-Through-Borough). The contracting authority is seeking to award the tender to up to three operators. TfL will conduct a Stage 1: Eligibility and Capability Assessment (‘ECA’). Each response or question will be scored as indicated. Pass/fail criteria will apply as indicated. TfL will take forward up to 10 tenderers from the ECA, being those tenderers who pass all Parts of the ECA and who have achieved the top ranking highest scored marks in Part 4 of the ECA. These tenderers will then have their response to the Stage 2: Qualitative Evaluation (‘QE’) evaluated. Evaluators will review the tenderer’s responses to the questions and evaluate against the criteria shown on the questionnaire. The weightings for each question will be applied to scored responses and those tenderers with no fails will be ranked. An award recommendation comprising the top three scoring tenders (assuming at least three tenders exceed the minimum scoring threshold) will be agreed on. Tender documents will be provided electronically via TfL’s ePortal, https://procontract.due-north.com/Login An invite to a (virtual) briefing meeting will be sent to all suppliers who have expressed an interest in the tender via the portal. It is intended that this meeting will give an overview of the tender process. Responses should be submitted electronically via TfL’s ePortal, https://procontract.due-north.com Tenders will agree to charges set out in the agreement for the opportunity. No fees will be paid to the operators by the authority. Charges comprise the full service charge, the ride-through charge and the per-vehicle charge (as per spec). The structure of the charges is as set out in the specification. Operators are not entitled to receive payment under this agreement from the administrator or any of the participating boroughs. Subject to the terms of the agreement, the trial is currently expected to commence in or around spring 2021 and run for a term of up to 12 months, over 13 consecutive 28-day periods. The Trial term may at TfL’s discretion and under the terms of the agreement, be extended for a further six 28-day periods. TfL will not be liable to any person for any costs whatsoever incurred in the preparation of bids or in otherwise responding to the ITT.