A report from Supply Management notes that Staffordshire County recently won a 2013 CIPS Supply Management Award for using a flexible dialogue competitive bidding process to award a joint venture contract for school services including meals and ground maintenance:
Having formalised the plan and objectives, an OJEU notice was published in April 2012. From this point, it took just eight months to go through a competitive dialogue process and whittle down the interested parties to the final victor. Within that time though, a lot was involved. The team clocked up a total of 276 hours of face-to-face dialogue with bidders, which while meeting the council’s demands, also served to reduce bidding costs by 40 per cent. Further engagement was provided through a week that put bidders together with relevant stakeholders, such as trade unions.
To ensure that no key documents were “left behind in the lunch hall”, all documents were stored in an online data room. The procurement, which complied fully with EU purchasing regulations, also saw 500 clarification questions answered and was carried out in close consultation with council members. The procurement process concluded with the selection of Capita as the private partner in the joint venture and the council is already eying impressive results in the near future. As a result of the change in delivery model, it expects to provide further protection for 5,000 staff by maintaining the delivery of services to schools, both in and out of the county, leveraging up to £51 million of investment and creating 2,175 new full time jobs within the joint venture over the next 10 years.
