Critical Timescales
Stage 1 – Selection Questionnaire – Submission Deadline 1pm, Friday 15th December 2024.
Stage 2 – Award Questionnaire – ITT due to be published 2nd February 2024 with a submission deadline of 1pm, Tuesday 5th March 2024.
Contract Award date – Monday 8th April 2024.
Lotting Structure & Services
This tender will cover National and International Permanent Recruitment Services including Recruitment Process Optimisation (RPO) and Statements of Work (SoW) within the healthcare sector for the NHS and the wider public sector.
The Participating Authority may purchase services either as a fully outsourced permanent or fixed term recruitment service, or via an RPO model or a SoW. It comprises 4 lots:
Lot 1a – Permanent Clinical Recruitment & Project Resourcing (including RPO). Covers national fixed term & permanent recruitment and RPO solutions for:
- Doctors, Consultants and GPs.
- Nurses, Midwives, Nursing Associates & Healthcare Support Workers.
- Allied Health Professionals
- Health Science Service Workers
Lot 1b – Permanent Non-Clinical Recruitment & RPO. Covers national fixed term & permanent recruitment and RPO & SoW for:
- Administration & Corporate Service Workers
- Non-Corporate Support Service Workers
- Information Technology Workers
- Social Workers
- Very Senior Managers
Lot 1c – International Permanent Recruitment. Covers fixed term and permanent international recruitment for:
- Doctors, Consultants and GPs.
- Nurses, Midwives, Nursing Associates & Healthcare Support Workers.
- Allied Health Professionals
- Health Science Service Workers
Lot 1d – Modular International Permanent Recruitment. By bidding for Lot 1c you will automatically be entered into Lot 1d of the SQ stage. This lot covers modular international recruitment solutions enabling Participating Authorities to receive support for individual aspects of an international recruitment project. This predominantly covers project management, candidate attraction, interview/screening/compliance support, pre-arrival pastoral care, post-arrival pastoral care and OSCE training.
Tender Procedure
This is a “restricted procedure” which means that there is a qualifying stage followed by a tender stage in this process:
- SQ – Selection Phase. This is the first stage of the process and is designed to establish if bidders are eligible to tender (including economic & financial standing and technical and professional capability).
- Award Phase (ITT) – Only those agencies that are successful at the selection phase will be invited to submit a formal tender during the Award Phase. Anyone failing the SQ stage will be rejected from the process.
Qualifying Criteria
- You must have an annual turnover of at least £500,000. If your business turnover is less than this your bid will automatically fail. This may mean that some micro-businesses are unable to bid as these are non-negotiable pass/fail criteria. Please read this section of the document carefully before making your bid/no bid decision.
- There are a number of other financial checks that HTE will undertake as part of their 9 step financial assessment of your business, and these can be found on pages 20-23 (Appendix 2 – Financial Supplier Assessment) of the Selection Questionnaire Guidance Document. Your D&B business failure score must be equal to or more than 35 for Lots 1a and 1b, and 51 for Lot 1c and 1d. If your score is lower than this, you will need to either:
- Self-insure with a potential provider that has a D&B score of at least 70, or
- Provide 2 years of annual accounts (1 year is acceptable if your business has not been incorporated long enough to provide 2 years) which demonstrate the financial requirements specified within the SQ documents in relation to working capital, liquidity, profitability, current ration and gearing. If your business does not meet these requirements, you will need to provide a guarantor that does meet the financial criteria specified.
- You must hold Cyber Essentials OR Cyber Essentials Plus OR ISO 27001 by the contract start date.
- The SQ guidance specifies that you must provide a published Carbon Reduction Plan before you will be given a contract with HTE. There are however specific questions relating to baseline and current year emissions in the questions on the portal, so requirements around carbon reduction will need clarification.
- If you are bidding for Lot 1c and 1d, you must be able to provide evidence that you are a member of the NHS Ethical Employers List.
- You must be able to provide a case study for each lot you are bidding for demonstrating where you have delivered at least 5 placements relevant to the lot within the last 12 months. It is also possible for you to meet the minimum scoring requirements for this question using a theoretical example if you haven’t supplied this lot in the past.
- You must agree to the framework terms and conditions.
- You will be required to pay HTE an activity-based income management charge (ABI) which is calculated at 4% of the total value of all invoices excluding VAT so this must be considered when calculating your pricing.
ITT Requirements
PLEASE NOTE: DO NOT COMPLETE THIS PART OF THE TENDER UNTIL HTE HAS EVALUATED THE SQ AND CONFIRMED YOU HAVE BEEN SUCCESSFUL.
CURRENTLY THE ITT (OR AWARD STAGE) WILL NOT BE PUBLISHED UNTIL 2ND FEBRUARY 2024 .
THIS SECTION IS THEREFORE JUST FOR INFORMATION
Each bidder must submit one tender in respect of each lot that it has been invited to respond to by HTE and must complete the commercial and technical envelopes. Evaluation weightings are 60% on technical/quality questions, 10% on social value questions and 30% on price.
To become an approved supplier to this framework, you must achieve a minimum total score of 65%.
Lots 1a, 1b and 1c have technical questions relating to:
- Service scope, delivery & standards (including your recruitment process and KPIs).
- Supplier staff (including policies, processes and controls for training/managing staff and meeting legislation; anti-bribery & corporate gifts; high pressure sales; and supervision, training and management of staff).
- Project management (including a Gantt chart and explanatory narrative on delivering a recruitment project relevant to the lot including scoping, project planning, implementation, SLAs, pre-go live support, reporting, exit planning and demobilisation).
- Quality assurance & contract management (including REC/APSCo or equivalent membership, ISO quality management and complaints procedure).
- Pricing (delivering best value and discounts).
- CSR/Social Value & Carbon Reduction questions.
Lot 1d also has technical questions relating to:
- Service scope, delivery & standards.
- Project management.
- Corporate Social Responsibility, Social Value & Carbon Reduction.
Registration for the Tender & Accessing the Documents
To access the PQQ documents, you must first register on the following link: https://healthtrusteurope.bravosolution.co.uk/web/login.shtml
You can then follow the instructions in the documents and on the portal.
