Repair and maintenance services

Description

Southend-on-Sea Borough Council (the Council) is seeking a lead provider to deliver and operate the whole of its passenger transport service (core services) as follows: (a) home to school transport for children with special educational needs and disabilities; (b) transport for supervised contact visits for families and transport for disabled children respite care; (c) adults with learning disabilities transport; and (d) dial-a-ride transport. The core services maximum budget is GBP 1.8 million per annum. Therefore any tenders that are in excess of GBP 1.8 million per annum will be disqualified. There may also be optional additional non-core services which the Council may add in its sole discretion (estimated to be an additional GBP 980 000 per annum) as well as potential investment for any approved projects via the strategic partnering agreement (no specific value is earmarked at this time and any investment would be agreed over the life of the strategic partnering agreement). The Council is seeking to procure a lead provider for 10 years (with an option to extend for 5 years) to provide a core service of an integrated passenger transport service which may flex and change over time in response to changes in legislation and any other matters which impact on such services. The Council may also during the term add additional services which involve a transport element. The Council will award a contract to the successful bidder i.e. a services agreement in relation to the core services and will also enter into a Strategic Partnering Agreement with the successful bidder to deliver the Council’s objectives as described in the services specification and the Strategic Partnering Agreement. The estimated contract value is inclusive of the potential option to extend and addition of services during the life of the contract. The maximum annual services agreement value which will apply as an affordability envelope for the purposes of bidding is set out in the tender documents. Any bids received in excess of such affordability envelope will be excluded. These services are subject to the full scope of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 and the Council is using the competitive dialogue procedure. It is proposed that a maximum of four bidders will be shortlisted at the selection questionnaire (SQ) stage to be invited to dialogue and tender, although more or less bidders may be shortlisted in accordance with the principles set out in the SQ instructions to applicants document published with the tender documents. The Council is intending to run a streamlined dialogue process and the anticipated timeline is set out in the SQ instructions to applicants document. There will be two stages: 1) a SQ stage where the Council will shortlist bidders and invite them to participate in dialogue; 2) a dialogue stage during which bidders will be required to submit an outline solution in response to the draft invitation to tender and attend a ‘Concept Testing’ dialogue session to present their solutions to the Council. The outline solution and concept testing sessions will not be evaluated and/or scored. There will be no shortlisting at this stage unless a bidder fails to submit its outline solution and attend the concept testing dialogue session. Further dialogue sessions (either face to face or by conference call) may be scheduled if the Council deems it necessary. Once satisfied that it will receive compliant bids, the Council will close dialogue and issue the final version of the invitation to tender (ITT) and call for bids. The final version of the ITT will be an update of the draft ITT published with the SQ. It is intended that the highest scoring bid will be awarded the contract on a 60:40 quality: price basis. If tied scores occur, then the highest quality score price between the tied scores will be taken forward and if that does not resolve the tie, the lowest price will be taken forward. All selection and award criteria are set out in the tender documents.