A customer’s experience of working with our FM, Property and Business Services Team
Many customers who come to us for a project will value the expertise and knowledge of our procurement leads so much they will return to us again to tender new projects and services.
Wendy Stanley, Administrator of the Estates Department at Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, takes us on the journey of a customer using frameworks within our FM, Property and Business Services category.
“We were first introduced to the North of England Procurement Collaborative in 2019 when we supported them with the award process for the Estates, Maintenance and Engineering Services (Hard FM) Framework. We approached all of our core suppliers to take part in the framework. We are very pleased that the suppliers that responded to the exercise and provided a bid were successful and were included within the framework.
“We have used the Hard FM framework to run further competitions which allows us to obtain the best possible price and also to directly appoint suppliers, which is the quicker method of appointment. We have gone on to use other NOE CPC frameworks for multiple projects at Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
Contracts awarded from multiple lots
“The first contract we awarded with NOE CPC was through Security Systems (Lot 12) of the Hard FM framework in April 2020. This was a maintenance contract, lasting four years.
“We ran a contract for Electrical FIT testing, for 5 years, starting in April 2021. This was awarded through the Minor Works Trades and Associated Services DPS.
“We went on to use the Hard FM framework twice in 2021 and twice in 2022. In 2021, we used it for a lift maintenance contract (Lot 9) and Medical Gas Systems (Lot 11) – both of these are four-year contracts – and this year, we have used it for an Air Conditioning maintenance contract (Lot 1) and an Automatic Doors contract (Lot 3).
More projects in the pipeline
“We have some maintenance contracts that we will need to review in 2023/24 (PAT testing, fire dampers and generators) and we will be looking to tender these via the Hard FM framework.
Support from our procurement experts
“We have found that the framework provides an efficient procurement route to appoint suppliers. The further competition process saves time and resources. We have also found the NOE CPC team to be very supportive.
“Imran [Ahmed], the framework manager has been brilliant, assisting us with each stage of the awards. He has helped to review our specifications, supported us with developing the further competition documents and provided support at the evaluation stage for both the cost and quality elements. We always receive a response to our queries in a timely manner.
“We have found the further competition template documents straightforward and easy to use. They are similar to the trust’s ITT documents, but are a more condensed, shorter version.
“We have enjoyed working with the NOE CPC team and would recommend these frameworks to other trusts. We have changed to a few new suppliers and we are happy with them – their performance has been great.”