Technical support services

Tender description

The DfE sought to procure a consultant to provide technical quality management services (‘TQM’) as part of its 2nd condition data collection programme (‘CDC2’). CDC2 follows on from CDC1 (2017-2019) and the property data survey programme (2012-2014). CDC2 will collect condition and estates information on the entire school estate in England (including all publicly funded schools and FE colleges) between 2020-2025. The DfE also required Tenderers to submit a pre-priced fully developed contract variation for the collection and sharing of the DfE’s Net Capacity Assessment (‘NCA’) data. The contract was anticipated to commence in August 2020. The estimated total value takes account of the possibility of the predicted value of any Net Capacity Assessment (NCA) services being delivered under the contract. The DfE undertook a suite of procurements through which it will deliver the CDC2 programme. The first of these was the procurement of the IT solution (see OJEU notice ref: 2019/S 225-552062). The second was this procurement of a technical quality manager (‘TQM’). The third procurement related to that of the surveying organisations (‘SOs’) to carry out surveys of the school estate. This notice relates to the procurement of the TQM. As expected the procurement of the TQM and SOs was carried out simultaneously, but the contract for the TQM included and Early Works Agreement before the award of the contracts for the SOs. The TQM will provide technical leadership and advice to all CDC2 programme stakeholders. The TQM will also be responsible for ensuring the maintenance of standards, continuous improvement, training and quality assurance of survey provision to ensure the provision of consistent high quality data throughout the duration of the CDC2 programme. The full requirements of the TQM services are set out in the procurement documents. The initial term of the contract will be 5.5 years, with an option to extend for a further period or periods of up to a maximum overall extension of 2 years. The initial term begins with an implementation period of 3 months and allows for a 3-month handover period prior to expiry (and the optional extension). This is to accommodate the 5 year CDC2 programme. Supplementary to the CDC2 programme and process, the DfE may require the TQM to take a leading role in overseeing the collection of Net Capacity Assessment (‘NCA’) data to understand the use of spaces within schools. The TQM role would ensure SOs understand the level and detail of data required to collect before commencing; and develop audit processes in conjunction with DfE and audit and quality assure the data collected. This data is used to measure and plan school places provision. Tenderers will be required to submit a pre-priced fully developed contract variation in respect of the NCA requirement. Further details of the NCA are contained in the procurement documents. The ITT requested information on how the TQM could support the collection of room level data to facilitate the DfE’s NCA processes. However, it is not known at the time of issuing this Notice whether services relating to NCA will actually be commissioned under the contract. On this basis the pre-priced variation was not evaluated.