Tendering For Care

How to Collaborate and Tender Successfully

The TfC Consortium Development Programme was devised in response to the current trend for purchasers to tender for "bigger, broader" contracts. Whereas, in the past, tenders have tended to be for dicrete srvices such as "respite care"; residential care"; "physiotherapy services"; or "financial management consultancy", etc. the trend is now to tender for an overall service or set up a framework to cover a wide range of services. These might be called "vulnerable people services"; "generic care"; "Learning Disability, Physical Disability and Mental health Services"; "primary care"; or "general management consultancy".

 The result is that companies and organisations are being forced to look for other organisations with which to collaborate in order to cover all of the requirements of the specification. There are already numerous cautionary tales from comapanies and organisations entering into collaborative tendering without ensuring that the basics are in pplace before the tender has been submitted.

The Regulations define a consortium as "two or more" economic operators tendering together for a public sector contract. Therefore the TfC Consortium Development Programme is suitable for all situations where more than one company and/or organisation plan to tender together. This may be for a traditional consortium; for situations where sub-contracting is appropriate; or where a full merger or take-over is more appropriate.

The Programme provides training and support through the four phases of development.

The Programme can be delivered through face to face meetings or by telephone conferencing.

TheProgramme includes:

      four half day development sessions for potential consortium members;

      checklists, documentation and a CD to assist decision  making;

      example agreements for consortium operation.

The TfC approach is already resulting in consortia winning contracts.

For full details please download the document from the link below.

There are a number of aspects of Due Diligence which are important for those involved in the tendering process:

1) Tendering and procurement may be perceived as a highly structured due diligence exercise, indeed we are now seeing requirements included in tender documents such as

    .......to provide full details, including timings of all due diligence to be conducted prior to the award of the contract"...

2) It is essential that all organisations considering any form of collaborative working such as consortium, sub-contracting, merger, etc., undertake a full and thorough due diligence procedure with regard to the organisations with which they plan to work at an early stage in the process;

3) Increasingly non-public sector orgaisations including umbrella bodies  and RSLs are tendering for contractors and sub-contracors. It is essential that potential contractors and sub-contractors undertake a thorough due diligence procedure with regard to the prospective purchaser before submitting a tender.

TfC is able to offer a full Due Diligence for Tendering Review of your organisation and/or of your actual or potential sub-contractors This service helps you to understand how the purchaser is likely to view your company or organisation. Our report is designed to help you to be more copetitive in the procurement marketplace.

Contact us for details

The attached leaflet provides a very general introduction to Due Diligence for Tendering

There is some confusion over whether or not a purchaser MUST tender for particular services contracts. The position is as follows:

The European Directive, 2004/18/EC, and subsequently the UK Public Contracts Regulations (2006) set out a clear set of requirements for purchasers. However, both sets of legislation allow a "light touch" approach to the procurement of certain services. These are known as Part B services. Part B tenders must comply with the regulations in that they must be "adequately advertised", must include a technical specification, and feedback must be available.

Underpinning the legislation are the requirements of the Treaties of Maastricht and Lisbon. Here Articles 81 and 82 are relevant. The Treaties and UK competition law require that nothing be done which in any way prevents, restricts or distorts competition. 

Therefore, although a contract may be for services which fall under Part B of procurement legislation, it is likely that it will be caught by the Treaty requirements and thus tendering for the services to be purchased becomes necessary. Government accepted the recommendation of the Glover Report, published in November 2008 which include that all tenders for contracts valued at £20,000 and above should be advertised electronically  by 2010, and that tenders should be electronic (no "paper only" tenders) by 2012

Identifying Part B Services

Many people are aware that health, education and social care are categorized as Part B services. This heading includes a wide range of other services such as gambling and casinos, ice breaking and making films for propaganda purposes. By using the following system it is possible to identify which services are included under the Part B heading, and therefore the light touch procurement system applies.

With effect from 16th September 2008 all tender notices published in the OJEU have been identified by referencing a new set of CPV codes. These are the standard codes used across all the EU to identify the goods and services to be purchased in the procurement process. The codes are important  as they are used to identify "Part B" services, that is to say those services which the public purchaser may procure without the need to comply fully with the Public Contracts Regulations 2006. 

Start by downloading the document reached through the link below titled "CPV Codes 2008". The schedule which starts on page 4 provides the full list of the new codes. For the identification of Part B codes printing out of the whole list is not necessary. In order to save paper just those which start with the number 4 and onwards will include all of the Part B codes.

An Amending Regulation has been published which changes that part of the Public Contract Regulations which lists the codes which relate to Part B service. It is a fairly common view that these services are ill defined. They are actually well defined in this document.

 Download the document from the link below "PCR amendment 2008".

This document amends Schedule 3 to the Public Contracts Regulations 2006. Go to Schedule 2 of the NEW document which starts on page 7. This lists the CPV codes for Part A services. On page 9 the list starts for the codes for Part B services. Print out the codes for Part B services.

By matching the CODES for Part B services from the PCR amendment list, with the titles of the codes from the CPV Codes 2008 list it is a straightforward job to identify exactly which services are Part B, and therefore to which the Public Contract Regulations do NOT apply in full. However, even for the purchase of Part B services, competition law applies and the procurement process must be open, transparent and not prevent, hinder or distort competition.

Collaborative working takes a number of formats which can range from a loose association, a federation, of more formal structures including mergers, joint ventures and Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) sometimes referred to as Special Purpose Enterprises.Over recent months, voluntary organisations in particular have been encoursged to collaborate in order to tender, whilst bigger, broader contracts are making this a necessity i n order to meet the requirements of many specifications. The Cabinet Office published a guide called "Working in a Consortium" which was edited by TfC, and can be downloaded from our Welcome page. TfC has delivered over 90 one day courses on consortium tendering. Our basic course sets out information on this apporach to tendering. Our "How to Tender as a Consortium" describes the process and provides relevant documentation. TfC also offers a "Consortium Development Programme" of four workshops which takes participants through the process on a step by step basis. A pilot course for an OCN qualification in tendering and working collaboratively will start in the Autumn of 2010 with organisations already signed up to partiocipate.

A  number of Commissioning Officers have attended some of the above courses. We have also seen questions raised on various message boards. It now seems that the time has come to address collaborative tendering from the perspective of the purchaser. Matters to be addressed include procurement and competition law, fair appraisal and evaluation systems, how case law may apply to collaborative structures, as well as developing  an understanding of the variety of collaborative vehicles which are available.

The course which is on offer addresses the above points. it is available for delivery to groups of Commissioning Officers, by arrangement and/or in "in-house" settings.

Following the General Election in May of this year, it has become very clear that public purchasing will contract significantly over the coming months. For example the total national spending on social care in 2009 was £18 billion, the plan is to reduce this by at least £4 billion to no more than £14 billion over the coming year (Ref. OGC). If tendering was competitive in 2009, it is significantly more so now with the standards required of a successful tender being raised considerably from July 2010. In order to tender successfully from now onwards, companies, charities and other organisations will need to provide evidence of compliance with an increasing range of standards and demonstrate clearly in the Method Statement that they have the capacity and capability to deliver the contract. 

We are already seeing an increased introduction of "Gateway questions". These are questions which are pass/fail in nature - essentially if the tenderer is unable to answer 'yes' to all of the gateway questions then the tender is excluded at that point.During June/July 2010 there have been a growing number of examples of tender documents stating "if you cannot answer 'yes' to the following questions do not proceed and do not submit a tender". This Free issue of RoundUP sets out some aspects of  the new requirements, requirements which are increasing week by week. RoundUP includes a list of typical Gateway questions.

For help with any aspect health, social care and voluntary sector tendering, please contact us by email on info@tenderingforcare.com

TfC is the only organisation which can offer five years experience of tendering successfully in these specialist areas.