Help, mentoring and support for those involved in the development of a consortium for tendering purposes.

The TfC Consortium Development Programme was devised in response to requests for more "hands-on" help than training courses. providers asked for help and faciltiation during the tender formation process.

The current trend is for purchasers to tender for "bigger, broader" contracts with ever more extensive contractual requirements set out in the specification. Whereas, in the past, tenders have tended to be for discrete 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". Of course, we are also moving into the era of GP Consortia (CCGs).

 The result is that providers are being forced to look for others with whom to collaborate in order to cover all of the requirements of the specification. There are already numerous cautionary tales fromproviders who have entered into consortium tendering without ensuring that the basics are in place before the tender has been submitted. Two consortia set up to tender for contracts are aleady out of business with considerable debts remaining. The Courts are also playing there part with punitive damages of £60,000 + costs awarded for the first time over failures in competition law regarding a contract worth £34,000.

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 provider 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 and/or by webinar/telephone conferencing.

The Programme includes:

•       four half day development sessions for potential consortium members;
•       checklists, documentation and a CD to assist with and support 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

A link to the Company's Training and Services Cancellation Policies can be found at the bottom of this page

Tel. 01629 57501

Fax 01629 584972

email info@tenderingforcare.com