Connectivity Cabinet Member – Minutes – 3 October 2019 (Joint)
1 PROCUREMENT OF CONSTRUCTION AND HIGHWAYS RELATED PROFESSIONAL SERVICES – The Director: Operations submitted a report seeking approval of the procurement plan for the renewal of the Construction and Highways Professional Services Framework which expired in December 2019.
The council managed and procured a range of essential construction and highways related activities covering spend of circa £20m+ each year and frequently engaged professional building design and related services to support the delivery of various building and construction programmes. Due to the inevitable uncertainties around the scale and timing of the council’s various building programmes, it was not practicable to resource the delivery of all projects exclusively using in-house design teams.
External technical services were used to support and supplement in-house resources. Often, they provided specialist services unavailable within the council (e.g. environmental and acoustic design services).
Services were currently primarily procured and delivered via the Construction and Highways Professional Services Framework which was originally established in 2015 following a fully compliant and robust procurement process.
A Framework Arrangement essentially established a list of quality assured service providers that the council could access as required. The framework was designed to support the recently re-tendered Construction and Highways Framework as a single solution across the council. The current framework delivered construction and highways services through two ‘lots’ specifically tailored for certain construction and highways requirements.
The council had an obligation under Public Contracts Regulations 2015 to replace the current Construction and Highways Professional Services Framework due to expire in December 2019 with a suitable and compliant alternative procurement solution to meet strategic business objectives.
As part of the planning work for the re-procurement of the services, the project team undertook consultation with existing contractors and stakeholders to examine whether the current procurement model was still suitable and reflected the priorities and strategic aspirations of the council alongside other potential procurement model solutions for construction.
Resolved – That the procurement of Option 2, an enhanced version of the current integrated framework arrangement model, set out in paragraph 2.8 of the report, be approved.