HCC - 06/22 - Pre-Procurement Market Engagement (PPME) relating to the procurement of Highways Maintenance Services and Professional Services

Tender description

Hertfordshire County Council (the Council) plans to commence two separate but related procurements in early 2023 to appoint service providers to deliver a (i) highways services term maintenance contract and (ii) professional services term contract. This notice is intended to announce the commencement of a pre-market engagement exercise relating to the Council’s appointment of the two service providers, more fully described in sections II.2.4 and VI.3. The Council wishes to facilitate the appointed service providers to identify and implement innovative solutions, establishing a new way of delivering the services to maximise the potential for success for both itself and the appointed service providers throughout the lifetime of the contracts. At present, the highways maintenance services and professional services are delivered through the Council’s existing highways services term maintenance contract and professional services term contract which are both due to expire in September 2024 Lot 1: This notice marks the commencement of a PPME exercise to conduct a consultation with service providers with expertise in successfully delivering similar services and to obtain feedback on the Council’s proposed approach to the separate procurement exercises for the highways services term maintenance contract (HST) and professional services term contract (PSC). The current expectation is for the formal procurements to commence in early 2023. A PPME document has been produced by the Council (available via https://in-tendhost.co.uk/supplyhertfordshire/aspx/Home)) explaining the potential scope of both opportunities in further detail. The Council recognises the challenges involved in delivering both services and has reflected on these in developing its desired strategy. The Council intends to focus on the following for both opportunities: •A service delivered in line with Hertfordshire’s Sustainability Strategy, playing a key role in delivering the strategy’s ambitions both in its organisations and the behaviour it encourages. The Council wishes to work with service providers to meet its ambitious environmental targets to address the climate emergency it declared in 2019; •Manage, improve and maintain the network for all users, encouraging and enabling active and sustainable travel; •Sustain a financially resilient service that delivers best value with the resources available; •Optimise service efficiency and maximise income from commercialisation and external funding. The Council wishes for appointed service providers to raise initiatives for providing a commercially astute service; •Embrace best practice, innovations and new technologies, enabling the service to continuously evolve and improve. The Council’s ambition is to create an exciting, new approach to the delivery of highways and related services; •Attract, develop, empower and retain the best people capable of driving dynamic and agile service; •Engage effectively to understand and meet the needs of our citizens and communities; •Develop and sustain collaborative partnership that delivers the objectives of all. The Council is keen to understand how it can better facilitate collaborative working across the highways service and in its supply chain; •A sensible and fair procurement process - as a local authority, the Council is committed to complying with the public procurement regime. While it hopes that this offers assurance that you should expect a fair and transparent process, the ambition is to also undertake two procurements which are not overly burdensome and facilitate enough interaction with bidders to arrive at the right decision. The PPME document explains how the Council proposes to do this in further detail.The details of the activities which will take place for the PPME are set out in the PPME document and will consist of a combination of: (i) a questionnaire (contained within the PPME document) for each opportunity. The Council is keen to receive responses in order to help it structure any future procurement process in a way that is going to be suitable for, and attractive to, the market; (ii) Open Day for all interested parties scheduled to take place via video conference on 13 July 2022. The Council will give interested parties further information on the anticipated procurement processes and the scope of the contracts; (iii) depending on the nature and level of interest, the Council may also hold one-to-one discussions with some or all of the companies that complete and return the questionnaire(s) (scheduled to take place on 14/15 July 2022) to secure a more detailed understanding of the services to be provided. This PPME exercise will provide a platform for potential service providers to comment and feed into the procurement processes. This early engagement is aimed at producing procurement programmes that best supports service providers to create and refine their final solutions that best deliver the Council’s requirement.