GENERAL (NB LOTS 1-4 ONLY)
Critical Timescales
- Deadline for receipt of clarification questions – 5pm, 6th March 2023.
- Deadline for Workforce Alliance responses to clarification questions – 8th March 2023.
- Deadline for submission of the bid – 11.59pm, 17th March 2023 – now extended to 14th April 2023.
- Intention to award letters published to all bidders – 13th September 2023.
- Framework award – 29th September 2023.
Registration & Accessing the Documents
To access the tender documents, you must first register on the following link: https://health-family.force.com/s/Welcome.
Once you’ve registered for an account, use the “find opportunities” section to register your interest for this tender and work through the instructions online.
Clarification Questions
Questions, clarifications and queries must be asked using the message facility on the portal. Try to ensure the question is specific and clear, and don’t include your company’s identity in the question as the full question and corresponding answer will be published on the portal for all bidders to see.
The Framework
This will be a multi-supplier framework for provision of clinical and healthcare staffing across multiple public sector organisations (particularly the NHS) across the UK. Specifically, this is for:
- Temporary and fixed term clinical agency workers.
- Master vendor and neutral vendor services.
The following services are out of scope of this framework:
- Non-medical, non-clinical staffing.
- Managed services to include staff bank.
- International recruitment.
- E-rostering and associated technical solutions.
Please note that winning a place on the framework does not guarantee you any business – it is just a “right to supply” and you will need to do traditional business development to generate business once the framework goes live.
Instructions
Do NOT provide any attachments that have not been requested. Extraneous marketing or presentation materials will be deleted without consideration by the buyer.
Ensure your tender is clear, concise and complete – your tender may be eliminated if it is ambiguous or lacks clarity.
Allow plenty of time to upload your tender. The portal can become slow near to the submission deadline and if you fail to have all documents uploaded prior to the submission deadline above, you will not be able to complete the submission. The maximum file size for uploading is 10MB.
All documents must be uniquely named or referenced, page numbered, fully cross referenced and include a table of contents.
When answering questions, you must use Arial font (size 11) for any documents outside the portal.
Do not exceed wordcounts allocated to the questions. Any additional wording will be disregarded by the evaluator.
Do not embed documents or provide links to websites unless specifically instructed to do so. Do not cross reference to other answers provided in the tender. Your answers must stand alone and be complete.
TENDER REQUIREMENTS
Lots
The framework is divided into 5 lots as follows:
- Lot 1 – Nursing & Midwifery
- Lot 2 – Medical & Dental
- Lot 3 – Allied Health Professionals (AHP), Health Science Services (HSS) & Emergency Services
- Lot 4 – Social Care Staffing
- Lot 5 – Master Vendor and Neutral Vendor
You can bid for one or more lots as long as you meet the requisite supply thresholds for each lot you are bidding for as specified in the section entitled Evaluation & Qualifying Criteria below.
Evaluation & Qualifying Criteria
Your bid will be evaluated in the following order. If you fail at any stage, the rest of your bid will not be evaluated:
- Compliance Check, SQ Questionnaire and Thresholds of Supply (pass / fail).
- Financial Assessment (pass / fail).
- Evidence Gather Exercise (minimum score of 3 points required for each question).
- Social Value (to be answered for all lots).
- Combine Technical and Commercial Score (if 70% or over your bid will pass, if 69.99% or under it will fail).
70% of the evaluation weighting based on quality and 30% is based on price.
1. Compliance Check, SQ Questionnaire and Thresholds of Supply (pass / fail)
The tender response must be compliant with the ITT and all questions must be answered. Non-compliant tenders will be excluded. In addition to completing the selection questionnaire on the portal, you must meet the threshold of supply for each lot as specified below. You will be required to provide evidence that you meet these thresholds by demonstrating that you have invoiced the specified number of hours for each lot stated below within a 12 consecutive month period between January 2020 and December 2022. The evidence required will include details of the client’s name, contact name and email address, route to market (e.g. framework supplied under), description of the roles supplied and the number of hours supplied during your selected 12 month period (max 30 clients). You will be required to provide an extract from your sales ledger to prove supply.
- Lot 1 – Nursing & Midwifery – 20,000 hours
- Lot 2 – Medical & Dental – 10,000 hours
- Lot 3 – Allied Health Professionals (AHP), Health Science Services (HSS) & Emergency Services – 5,000 hours
- Lot 4 – Social Care Staffing – 2,500 hours
2. Financial Assessment (pass / fail)
Details of how your economic and financial standing will be evaluated can be found Attachment 5 – Financial Viability Risk Assessment Guidance.
The lots have been tiered as follows:
Lot 1 – Nursing & Midwifery – silver
Lot 2 – Medical & Dental – silver
Lot 3 – Allied Health Professionals (AHP), Health Science Services (HSS) & Emergency Services – bronze
Lot 4 – Social Care Staffing – bronze
You will need to meet the following financial standards to be successful at this stage of the bid:
- For “silver” lots – you must fill out and upload the Silver FVRA tool at attachment 5a.
- For “bronze” lots – you will only be required to complete the Bronze FVRA tool in Attachment 5b if you have a D&B Score of less than 40 and therefore fail the initial financial risk assessment.
- Bidders applying for both silver and bronze lots should only complete the Silver FVRA.
Please note that the FVRA tools are complex spreadsheets that need to be completed by your accountant or a finance professional – we recommend you make a start on completing this document as soon as possible as it may be time consuming!
The FVRA has RAG thresholds which self-score when completing the tools as follows:
- Green – pass with no further action.
- Amber or red – this is not an automatic fail; however you will need to use the black tabs on the spreadsheet to explain any amber or red results.
You will also need to provide the most recent 3 years’ accounts for your organisation and if applicable your parent company and ultimate parent company. If you have been trading less than 3 years, you must provide all available financial information since the time of formation.
3. Evidence Gather Questions
You will need to provide a process diagram that demonstrates all the steps/sub steps necessary to complete each of the following checks. You will also need to provide a summary description of no more than 500 words to further outline the steps/sub steps identified in the diagram and supporting evidence for the following processes:
- AC1 – Verification of Identification.
- AC2 – Verification of Professional Registration & Qualifications Checks.
- AC3 – Verification of Employment History and Reference Checks.
- AC4 – Verification of Work Health Assessments.
- AC5 – Criminal Records Checks.
- AC6 – Right to Work Checks.
You must score at least 3 points out of 4 for each for each of these questions to pass this stage of the process. To get all 4 points you must demonstrate an exceptional understanding of the requirement and provide substantial supporting evidence to demonstrate a well-established process is being followed.
4. Social Value Questions
There are 2 social value questions that apply to all lots. The first is simply a yes/no (pass/fail) answer. The second (weighted at 10% for evaluation with a maximum 650 words length) requires you to explain how you will:
- Create meaningful employment opportunities for people facing barriers.
- Implement initiatives or create leadership roles held by people from ethnic minority groups.
- Implement mental health campaigns to create a community of acceptance.
5. Commercial Evaluation
You must complete the pricing matrix (Attachment 3) for each lot you are bidding for. This involves providing an hourly rate in £ for all shifts per band within each lot and this will be the maximum rate of commission applicable.
You must complete all yellow cells for each lot you are bidding for. Each pay band is evaluated in isolation. You will receive maximum marks if your tendered rate is at or below the median for each pay band. If your tendered rate is above the median then you will receive proportionately less marks based on how far above the median your price is.
If your pricing is considered abnormally low, you will be asked to explain why, and prove you can deliver the service sustainably at these rates throughout the contract period. If your explanation is not acceptable your bid will be rejected.
You should note that a management charge of 0.75% is payable to Workforce Alliance on all spend (this increases to 3% for workers supplied under a direct engagement model).
Pre-Framework Award Audits
As part of the evaluation, all bidders who meet the required standards in this bid will be subject to a pre-framework award audit (by a contracted external audit supplier on behalf of Workforce Alliance) before being awarded a place on the framework. This is a desktop audit and forms part of scoring questions AC1-AC6 as detailed above. If you fail this audit you will be disqualified from the tender process.
Other Pre-Qualifying Criteria
- Insurance – you will need to have the following insurances in place:
- Employers Liability – £10 million
- Public Liability – £5 million
- Professional Indemnity – £10 million
- Cyber Essentials – you must either:
- Have a valid cyber essentials certificate awarded by one of the Government approved accreditation bodies within the last 12 months, OR,
- Confirm you are working towards cyber essentials accreditation and that you will have the accreditation in place by the framework commencement date.
Questions to Answer on the Portal
- Standard Selection Questionnaire – a set of 109 questions.
- Commercial Envelope – upload Attachment 3 – Pricing Workbook.
- Lots 1-4 – confirmation that you are bidding (question yes/no answer for each lot).
- Technical Envelope – upload sections:
- Contract Administration Information.
- Form of Tender.
- Evidence Gather & Assurance – 6 Questions for Lots 1-4 plus supporting evidence.
- Social Value Questions.
BRUNTON BID WRITING SERVICE
Full Outsource Service
To outsource the full bid where we complete all of the questions on your behalf and upload all of the required documentation to the portal ready for your review and submission. This includes 6 policy templates and a standard operating procedure to assist you with evidence required in the technical questionnaire
Please note, we cannot:
- Complete the FVRA spreadsheet for you – this will need to be done by an accountant/finance professional.
- Review or update your existing policies.
- Comment on the content that you provide on the FVRA spreadsheet. You will need to obtain your financial advice – we’re not accountants!
- Provide advice on where to pitch your pricing or offer legal advice.
Pricing
- Full tender including 1 lot – £9,000 + vat
- Each additional lot – a further £1,000 + vat
For more information, please email
fiona.brunton@bruntonconsultancy.co.uk or call 01688 400319.