PLEASE NOTE: This blog has been updated on 20th August after reviewing the clarification questions and answers provided by Workforce Alliance. Additional information has been inserted in green!
So the long awaited Workforce Alliance tender for supplying staff to the NHS is finally LIVE!
This framework is combines the CCS, CPP, LPP and NHS Procurement in Partnership so it’s a big one. Getting onto this framework will mean that you are approved to supply the NHS so for many businesses it’s critical.
We have reviewed the documents and come up with an overview which will allow you to get a broad perspective of what is required. We hope it’s helpful!
GENERAL
Critical Timescales
- Deadline for receipt of clarification questions – 5pm, 29th August 2019
- Deadline for Workforce Alliance responses to clarification questions – 4th September 2019
- Deadline for submission of the bid – 11.59pm, 20th September 2019
Registration & Accessing the Documents
To access the tender documents, you must first register on the following link: https://procontract.due-north.com/Register
Once you have your username and password, you should login on the following page: https://procontract.due-north.com/Login
Click on the Find Opportunities tab, and then under the drop down menu entitled organisations, scroll down and find NHS London Procurement Partnership. This will bring up a list of frameworks including one called “Clinical and Healthcare Staffing Framework (Clinical and Healthcare Staffing Framework ITT)”. Click on this link.
This will take you to a page where you can register your interest in this opportunity. It is also the page where you can download all of the documents (under Attachments in the bottom right hand corner of the screen).
You can then follow the instructions in the documents and on the proactis portal.
Clarification Questions
Questions, clarifications and queries must be asked using the facility on the proactis 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.
You will be able to see messages and clarifications on a panel of this name on the right hand side of your screen once you have accessed the tender.
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 (including Master Vendor Services)
- Clinical permanent recruitment (UK only)
- 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 of permanent or temporary staff
- 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”.
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.
- For questions asking you to describe how you will comply with a requirement, you must provide an appropriate level of detail. A mere statement that you will comply with the requirement is not sufficient and may lead to disqualification of your tender.
- Do not embed documents or provide links to websites. 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 7 lots as follows:
- Nursing & Midwifery
- Medical & Dentistry
- Allied Health Professionals & Health Sciences Staff
- Emergency Services
- Social Care Staffing
- Neutral Vendor
- Clinical Permanent Recruitment
You can bid for one or more lots (see below section entitled Evaluation & Qualifying Criteria to ensure you meet the minimum threshold for the lots you are wishing to bid for before you start).
Evaluation & Qualifying Criteria
This is an overview of how your tender will be evaluated. There are a number of pass/fail criteria. If you cannot meet these criteria then your bid will be eliminated.
- Compliance/validation – the tender response must be compliant with the ITT. This includes submission of evidence for the pre-award audit. Non-compliant tenders will be excluded.
- Eligibility questionnaire – One of the questions asks if your broadband connections are HSCN compliant – this is a pass/fail mandatory question and you must answer “yes” to pass.
- Financial checks – you will be assessed for financial standing against the criteria set out in Appendix 4 (document 9). If you fail to meet this financial standing criteria, your bid will not be progressed for evaluation, so it is worth checking this before you do any work.
- Contracted hours – you must be able to provide evidence of contracted hours for each lot that you are bidding during the 12 months up to 31st August 2019 and this must be uploaded to the portal. You can include hours as a subcontractor or lead contractor to NHS/public sector hospitals and private sector hospitals or to other settings such as private nursing / care homes. To pass this section you must attach a file that evidences this activity – examples could include (but are not limited to ) internal system summary or ledger reports or appropriate reporting data. Such evidence must not contain any data that would be commercially sensitive (e.g. management information relating to a specific Trust) or personal data (that breaches the GDPR). A signed letter from a Trust will also not be accepted as proof of hours. Qualifying criteria in terms of hours for each lot are as follows:
- Lot 1 – Nursing & Midwifery – threshold hours 30,000
- Lot 2 – Medical & Dentistry – threshold hours 10,000
- Lot 3 – Allied Health Professionals & Health Sciences Staff – threshold hours 5,000
- Lot 4 – Emergency Services – threshold hours 2,500
- Lot 5 – Social Care Staffing – no threshold
- Lot 6 – Vendor Neutral – no threshold
- Lot 7 – Clinical Permanent Recruitment – no threshold
Please note that you cannot bid as a consortium, using an SPV or use subcontractors unless you are bidding for Lot 6 – Neutral Vendor. You therefore cannot join forces with other companies to achieve the hours required in Lots 1-5. You must therefore answer “no” to question 1.2(a) – (i) – are you bidding as the lead contact for a group of economic operators?
- Relevant experience and contract examples – this is a question in the Eligibility Questionnaire which requires you to provide up to 3 examples of contracts that you have supplied that are relevant to the lots you are bidding for. If you are bidding for more than one lot, you must provide 3 contract examples for each lot. If you are unable to do this, you will need to explain why.
- Insurance – you will need to have the following insurances in place:
- Employers Liability – £10 million
- Public Liability – £10 million
- Professional Indemnity – £5 million
- Closed quality questions – these can be found on the portal and require a yes/no response. You must answer “yes” to all of these to achieve 100% score which is required if your bid is to be progressed for further evaluation. This section accounts for 20 marks.
- Commercial evaluation – you must meet the minimum threshold of 50% in this section of your bid will not be progressed for further evaluation. This will involve submitting supplier fees for each lot you wish to bid for. Please note that the supplier fee must be fixed per band and shift type. No regional variation is permitted on the fee alone. The supplier fee must include all costs associated with the provision of services (e.g. administration, recruitment, compliance checks, management of the worker, payment of the management charge to the authority (0.75% of total invoice value), overheads such as staffing costs and a reasonable profit margin. The supplier fee will NOT include statutory costs such as WTR, NI and pension contributions. Check the evaluation model provided on pages 11 and 12 of the Document 1 – Invitation to Tender when completing the pricing schedule.
- Pre-award audit – bids that have passed the minimum criteria and achieved the minimum threshold in the commercial scores of 50% will be passed to independent auditors who will assess the content of your “Audit Zip Folder”. Read Appendix 3 which provides full details of this requirement and should be used to help you complete the 12 questions in the Audit Questionnaire on the portal. In short, you will need to upload the following policies/procedures together with other supporting evidence to demonstrate that you put these policies and procedures into practice within your business:
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- Verification of candidate ID checks and approval to place a worker with disclosed convictions prior to placement
- Verification of candidate employment history and reference checks
- Verification of candidate professional registration and qualification checks
- Verification of candidate right to work checks
- Verification of candidate work health assessment checks
- Verification of candidate English language competency checks
- Verification of statutory and mandatory and clinical/care core training checks
- Verification of appraisal and revalidation checks
- Verification of dated and signed terms and conditions of agreement/employment with registered candidates
- Verification of criminal record checks
- Verification of accurate charging, invoicing and timesheet processing
- Verification of readily accessible and secure retention of records (including compliance with Regulation 29 of the Conduct Regulations and GDPR)
If any of these are scored as “none evidenced” or “poor”, you will not be awarded a place on the framework.
Please note that each individual file within the zip folder must be named using the following protocol: SUPPLIER NAME-AUDIT CRITERIA REF-Title of Document
You should include no more than 5 pieces of evidence per audit criteria – follow the instructions in Appendix 3. Evidence may include things like audit checklists/results, screenshots from your systems demonstrating compliance etc.
Please note that you must provide evidence relevant to each lot you are bidding for in this section (e.g. evidence of proof of relevant qualifications/registrations is different for nurses to doctors etc).
If you are only bidding for Lot 7 – permanent recruitment, you will still be required to provide policies and evidence for each of the 12 audit criteria as clarification question 13 states that Contracting Authorities may not choose to carry out the onboarding requirements themselves.
Questions to Answer on the Portal
- Eligibility questionnaire – a set of 77 questions of which 54 are mandatory
- Audit questions – a set of 12 questions in which all are mandatory and will involve uploading your policies and supporting documentation relevant to each lot as specified above
- Lot specific questions – only complete these for the lots you are bidding for and click opt out for the others. For lots 1-5, the lot specific questions ask if you are bidding as master vendor and if you have over 2 years’ experience of delivering master vendor solutions. This is NOT a pass/fail criteria, so you can answer yes to confirm you are bidding for these lots as appropriate but do not need to supply master vendor services.
- Commercial – 1 mandatory question – upload your commercial schedule
- ITT Document set – 1 mandatory question – upload your signed ITT document set
- Document 4 – Terms & Conditions – you must fill in (including the blue sections), sign and upload this document which confirms you are accepting the T&Cs in principle.
BRUNTON BID WRITING SERVICES
This is an unusual tender in that there are no qualitative answers required. The portal requires short text, numerical and yes/no answers and there are no method statements or detailed responses. That said, there are a considerable number of attachments comprising over 500 pages and various policies/procedures, evidence (including proof of track record) that need to be uploaded and complex price evaluation criteria which may make this tender feel daunting. We are offering 3 service options:
- OPTION 1 – 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. Please note that we do not provide advice on where to pitch your pricing or offer legal advice. This service does not include provision of the 12 policies that are required (or review of your policies if you already have them).
The cost for this service is a fixed fee of £4,950 + vat
- OPTION 2 – the consultancy and review service which includes:
- A full review of all of the documentation relating to the bid (so we know the documents inside out and will be well positioned to give advice).
- Ongoing review of the “clarification” questions and answers as they are published.
- Unlimited telephone and email support throughout the bid period (until the submission deadline).
- Advice and guidance on answering the questions, and documents you need to upload to the portal as part of your bid (please note this does not include provision of the 12 policies that are required or a review of your policies if you already have them – these can be purchased separately as described in option 3 below).
- Assistance with understanding the pricing evaluation and how to complete the pricing schedule (please note that we are unable to advise you where to pitch your pricing – this is a commercial decision for your business).
- A full review of the portal (once you have uploaded your bid) to ensure it is complete and compliant and that all attachments have been uploaded correctly.
The cost for this service is a fixed fee of £2,950 + vat
- OPTION 3 – Policy templates – we are able to provide the 12 policy templates required for this tender. These will be in template format and you will need to customise them to your business and with your branding as appropriate.
- Verification of candidate ID checks and approval to place a worker with disclosed convictions prior to placement
- Verification of candidate employment history and reference checks
- Verification of candidate professional registration and qualification checks
- Verification of candidate right to work checks
- Verification of candidate work health assessment checks
- Verification of candidate English language competency checks
- Verification of statutory and mandatory and clinical/care core training checks
- Verification of appraisal and revalidation checks
- Verification of dated and signed terms and conditions of agreement/employment with registered candidates
- Verification of criminal record checks
- Verification of accurate charging, invoicing and timesheet processing
- Verification of readily accessible and secure retention of records (including compliance with Regulation 29 of the Conduct Regulations and GDPR)
These can be purchased for:
- £995 + vat for all 12 of the policy templates required for this tender, or;
- £95 + vat each