Critical Timescales
Stage 1 – Selection Questionnaire – Submission Deadline 1pm, Friday 15th December 2024.
Stage 2 – Award Questionnaire – ITT due to be published 8th March 2024 with a submission deadline of 1pm, Monday 15th April 2024.
Contract Award date – Monday 2nd September 2024.
Lotting Structure & Services
This tender will cover temporary recruitment supply within the healthcare sector for the NHS and the wider public sector. It comprises 6 lots:
Lot 3a – Medical Locums & General Practitioners (and Consultants). Includes:
- Anaesthesia.
- Clinical oncology.
- Clinical radiology.
- Community sexual and reproductive health.
- Emergency medicine.
- GPs.
- Intensive care medicine.
- Obstetrics & gynaecology.
- Occupational medicine.
- Ophthalmology.
- Medicine.
- Pathology.
- Psychiatry.
- Surgery.
- Paediatrics.
Lot 3b – Nursing & Care Workers. Includes:
- Registered nurses.
- Community nursing.
- Community services.
- Dental nursing.
- Healthcare support workers.
- Health visitors.
- Midwives.
- NHS direct.
- General nursing & midwifery.
- Theatre nurses and practitioners.
Lot 3c – Allied Health Professionals & Health Science Service Workers. Includes:
- Art therapy staff.
- Chaplaincy.
- Clinical psychology.
- Dietetics.
- Generic therapy.
- Orthoptists and optometrists.
- Physiotherapy.
- Play specialists.
- Podiatry.
- Public health & health improvement.
- Radiography.
- Sexual health.
- Speech and language therapists.
- Theatre practitioners.
And:
- Anatomical pathology.
- Biomedical scientists & clinical support.
- Cancer screening.
- Clinical sciences.
- Cytology.
- Dental services.
- Genetic counsellors.
- Healthcare science.
- Medical technology.
- Orthoptists and optometrists.
- Pharmacy.
Lot 4 – Non-Medical & Non Clinical (including Executive Recruitment). Includes:
- Administration & corporate service workers (covers admin, clinical coding, customer service, finance, HR, legal, library services, media, secretaries, procurement, project management PR & comms and technical services).
- Non-corporate support service workers (catering, driving, estates/maintenance, hospitality, logistics, security, stores and warehousing).
- Information technology workers (data analytics, health informatics, ICT and information management & technology).
- Very senior management and executive.
Lot 5 – Social Care & Social Workers. Includes:
- Social care workers (care assistants, care workers (in domiciliary/residential/daycare settings).
- Social workers (social workers, senior practitioners, team managers approved MH professionals, occupational therapists, physiotherapists and psychologists).
Lot 6 – Master Vendor Solutions. MV solution covering:
- Doctors
- Consultants
- GPs
- Nurses
- Midwives
- Care Support Workers
- AHP
- Health Service Scientists
- Non-Medical Non-Clinical Workers
- Unqualified Social Care Staff
- Qualified Social Care Staff
You must be awarded Lot 6 AND the relevant temporary staffing lots to supply this lot.
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
- For lots 3a, 3b, 3c, 4 and 5, you must have an annual turnover of at least £500,000. For Lot 6 you must have an annual turnover of at least £1m. 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 3a, 3b, 3c, 4 and 5. For Lot 6 your D&B business failure score must be equal to or more than 51. 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.
- Where possible you need to provide invoices and a case study for one customer for each lot you are bidding for (Lots 3a, 3b, 3c, 4 and 5) demonstrating where you have placed at least 5 temporary workers 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. For Lot 6, you will need to demonstrate supply of a MV solution including consolidated subcontractor supply chain invoicing for one or more customers in the last 24 months relevant to Lots 3a, 3b, 3c, 4 or 5.
- 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 (for consideration when calculating your pricing):
- 1% of the total value of all invoices excluding VAT for lots 3a, 3b and 3c.
- 0.75% f the total value of all invoices excluding VAT for lots 4. 5 & 6.
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 for Lots 3a, 3b, 3c, 4 or 5, you must achieve a minimum total score of 65%.
To become an approved supplier to this framework for Lot 6, you must achieve a minimum total score of 75%.
Lots 3a, 3b, 3c, 4 and 5 have technical questions relating to:
- Supplier staff: Standards & Obligations (including policies, processes and controls to ensure staff are properly trained and instructed).
- Recruitment procedures: standards, obligations & assurance (end to end process flow that demonstrates how your compliance standards align to NHSE standards and ensuring temporary workers are trained in accordance with the CSTF).
- Booking procedures, standards, obligations & assurance and pricing & payment (including processes, pricing discounts, best value and price controls).
- Quality assurance, complaints handling and compliance audit (including REC/APSCo or equivalent membership, complaints procedure, preparing compliance files for external audits).
- Social Value & Carbon Reduction questions.
In addition, Lot 6 has technical questions relating to:
- Master vendor staffing solutions (covering added value, maintaining fill rates, evidence of ISO 9001, evidence of ISO 27001).
- Project management (project plan in form of a Gantt chart).
- Corporate Social Responsibility, Social Value & Carbon Reduction questions.
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.
