How to tender for school contracts

Frameworks are another aspect of procurement that schools can make use of. These agreements are contracts that organisations such as local authorities, central government departments, or public buying organisations negotiate with suppliers to get the best, compliant deals.

These organisations – such as Education Buying – make these deals available to you providing an easier, alternative way of complying with the Public Contract Regulations.

When schools use a framework agreement, they do not have to openly advertise the opportunity or follow the full procedural rules. Instead, schools can call off their specific requirements from the framework suppliers.

Call-offs are the final hurdle for the supplier to overcome so that they can begin working with you. Only once the call-off is completed and signed can the supplier start the work.

Some Frameworks allow Direct Awards, this is where you can award to a single preferred supplier.

There is also the option of using a DPS.

What is a DPS?

A Dynamic Purchasing Systems (DPS) is a framework with the added flexibility of being able to add suppliers at any time. All Call Off’s are carried out by a Further Competition. Unlike a framework, where the suppliers are fixed.

All suppliers on a framework or DPS (unless the supplier is being added) will have followed a price and quality tender exercise, this means the school will not have to undertake a typical 3 quote or tender process as this has already been completed by the Framework provider. For some bespoke requirements the direct award option is not always possible, and you would have to run a mini competition.

Depending on the value of the procurement, schools must comply with key procurement rules. Procurements above certain thresholds must comply with the UK Public Contracts Regulations 2015.

The thresholds depend on the type of contract and apply to the whole value of the contract throughout its duration, including any possible extensions or renewal options. If schools purchase multiple successive contracts of the same type, the threshold applies to the aggregated spend of these contracts over a 12-month period.

We have a blog covering the PCR 2015 regulations and how you can be assured you remain compliant here.

Whatever you choose, whether it be a Framework or DPS it is crucial for schools to follow a formal tendering process for medium to high-value contracts.

This process ensures a fair, consistent, and effective approach to procurement exercises. The higher the value or complexity of the project, the more detailed the documentation needs to be, and the longer the process is likely to take so keep timelines in mind and plan around your contract’s end dates well in advance!

Tendering Timeline

Is your catering/cleaning contract due to expire in 2023? Do you need to check that you are getting best value from your current arrangements?

If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then now is the time to get the ball rolling to ensure you have time to run a compliant process and give yourself the best chance of making savings/avoiding added costs.

A full procurement process for complex goods or a services contract can take 6-9 months so plan in plenty of time a diarise reminders based on your contract register. Don’t have a contracts register? Click here and have all your contracts in one place so that you can track contract end dates.

When it comes to how long your contract should be, take your cleaning contract for example, we’d recommend basing the contract on how long you’re likely to want to keep the contract going for, so anything from 3 years to 5 years is probably the norm in most cases.

In other areas such as energy, this can be anything from 1 year to 3 years, with an annual review option.

This doesn’t have to mean you’re tied into the contract, as you can have review points and extension points where the contract can be cancelled or extended at the school’s discretion.

You may still be thinking, why does a tender take so long anyway? Let’s run through the tender process and the preparation required.

How to prepare for a tender

There are a few stages to preparing a tender, the first being – defining your requirement. This is where you should spend time upfront to thoroughly assess exactly what it is you need and why.

Think carefully about exactly what it is that you need and what key priorities you need to be delivered (often this is driven by your budget) that can dictate exactly what may be available or achievable at a particular price point.

Have you consulted the main stakeholders whether that is staff, pupils’ parents etc? Involve them as early as possible in the process so that the requirements are clearly defined from the start.

You should never underestimate the time needed to define the requirements and complete the specification. It is better to overestimate it than have to delay the tender process.

This is where we can help, our team of procurement experts can assist on delivering numerous good or services through our Frameworks and DPSs, while helping you through every step of the process.

After defining your requirements, it’s time to turn them into a specification. A specification is a comprehensive and detailed description of your requirements. Your specification should include the following:

Following your specification being created, it’s time to create evaluation criteria. The evaluation criteria and weightings are an important part of the tendering process and indicate to potential suppliers how you will decide which supplier to award the contract to.

Evaluation criteria and weightings form the basis upon which you select the supplier. The supplier that gets the highest score will be awarded the contract. It’s, therefore, important to reflect your school’s priorities when deciding on what weightings are going to be used.

The evaluation criteria also communicates clearly to the potential suppliers how you will make to your decision to award a contract. This helps them to design a response to your tender which is well aligned with your priorities.

There are two key aspects to the evaluation criteria, the first is:

Selection Criteria – this is about evaluating the capability of the supplier themselves and is backward looking, meaning it looks for evidence that the supplier holds particular qualifications/accreditations, levels of financial standing and can demonstrate previous experience of delivering requirements similar to your own.

The second aspect is:

Award Criteria – this is focused on the goods and services to be delivered – and is forward looking. This means it asks suppliers how they will deliver your specific requirements.

Good award criteria relates directly to your specification and allows the evaluation panel to make fair and equal comparison of the bids received.

Critically, You need to publish your scoring methodology to all bidders upfront. It is best practice to publish your evaluation criteria and weightings to suppliers however, it is mandatory for above-threshold tenders.

Preparing Tender Documents:

After your specification and evaluation criteria are set, it’s time to create an Invitation to Tender Pack (ITT Pack).

The pack provides all necessary documentation to potential suppliers so that they can put together their best tender submission for your school. All suppliers must receive the same ITT pack and provide their submission in the same format to enable your school to evaluate on a ‘like for like’ basis.

An ITT Pack typically includes: