Decision details

1. Approve the procurement strategy to direct award a £1,280,024 contract to United Living under Workstream 5: Multidisciplinary Works of the London Housing Consortium (LHC) Refurbishment and Modernisation (RM3) framework.

2. Approve the contract award of £1,280,024 to United Living Workstream 5: Multidisciplinary Works of the LHC Refurbishment and Modernisation (RM3) framework.

These works are needed to ensure we have housing infrastructure that complies with Fire Safety Regulations.

Given the analysis provided in ‘procurement route analysis of options’ section, we believe a direct award via Workstream 5: Multi-Disciplinary Works of the LHC Refurbishment and Modernisation framework is the most viable option.

Option 1: Undertake a full regulated procurement process, advertised to the market (Not Recommended)

This option offers a strong degree of competition, as it allows the whole market to bid for the opportunity, providing the opportunity for suppliers to bid for the work and compete with one and other as part of a cost and quality competition. This competition stimulates an environment whereby H and F can be confident that suppliers compete to offer the best and most competitive blend of quality and value for money in their bids.

The disadvantage is that the time it takes to deliver them. Competitive tender can take several months to seek tenders and evaluate the results, before contract award Governance can begin. The service urgently needs to progress these works to stay on track with the Fire Safety Programme and therefore have ruled out mini competition on this occasion, because of the time required to procure using this option.

Option 2: Procure using a compliant framework or Dynamic Purchasing System (DPS) (Recommended)

The framework permits two buying options, mini competition and direct award.

The service urgently needs to progress these works to stay on track with the Fire Safety Programme and therefore have ruled out mini competition on this occasion, because of the time required to procure using this option. Whilst typically quicker than a full regulated procurement process, advertised to the market, the mini competition would still take a longer timeframe than is available to procure this service to deliver the works.

Direct Award from a suitable and compliant framework would be the quickest option. Upon research of appropriate frameworks, we are seeking to compliantly direct award a contract using Workstream 5: Multi-Disciplinary Works of the LHC Refurbishment and Modernisation framework.

This framework assessed suppliers on a 70% quality and 30% price basis. Untied Living (South)’s score complies with our quality standards.

Unlike traditional frameworks who rank their suppliers based on a quality/cost split, this framework does not rank suppliers and allows for a compliant direct award based on 4 justifications. The justification that applies to this procurement is ‘Direct award to a supplier who has been appointed to work for the organisation in a similar capacity (they do not need to have worked on the same programme/masterplan)’.

These options provide varying levels of assurance that the resulting providers are value for money. Option 1, a full regulated procurement process, advertised to the market, below provides the highest guarantee of value as it is open to the whole market, whereas Option 2, direct award from a framework, provides a limited degree of assurance (from the fact of the competition required to get onto the framework in the first place).