Electric Scooter (E-Scooter) Rental Trial in London

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 such trial 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. Lot 1: A competitive procurement for the award of the contracts to operators in relation to an electric scooters (‘escooters’) trial in London (‘Trial’). The procurement was conducted pursuant to the research and development services exemption under regulation 14 of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 (‘PCR 2015’) and this is a voluntary contract award notice. A contract notice was published and the tender documents were provided electronically via TfL’s e-portal, https://procontract.due-north.com. The deadline to respond was 14th December 2020.TfL conducted a Stage 1: Eligibility and Capability Assessment (‘ECA’). 10 Tenderers who passed all Parts of the ECA and who achieved the top ranking highest scored marks in Part 4 of the ECA were taken forward. These Tenderers then had their responses to the Stage 2: Qualitative Evaluation (‘QE’) evaluated. Evaluators reviewed the Tenderers’ responses to the questions and evaluated against the criteria shown on the questionnaire. The weightings for each question were applied to scored responses and those Tenderers with no fails were ranked. At the end of this procurement process, TfL chose to award contracts to three Operators 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 operators 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). This was a zero-value procurement where no fees will be paid to the operators by the Authority. Operators are not entitled to receive payment under this agreement from the administrator or any of the participating boroughs. Operators have agreed to pay the charges set out in the agreement for the opportunity to operate in the participating boroughs. 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. 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 twelve months, over thirteen 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. This is a zero value procurement and a nominal value of GBP 1 is therefore shown at II.1.7) and V.2.4). Low income/equitable access plans were evaluated; price was not assessed. The fixed charges set out in the admin agreement will be shared amongst TfL and participating authorities. The Invitation to Tender gave full details of the process and Evaluation Criteria.