St Thomas More Catholic Academy - Cleaning Services

The successful tenderer will be required to provide cleaning services at St Thomas More Catholic Academy. St Thomas More Catholic Academy is located in Longton, Stoke on Trent and its values are based on Christian beliefs and community focus. Since becoming an Academy Leader managers, committee members and the sponsor have worked together well to establish a culture of high expectations. The successful contractor will be expected to follow the same principles. The Academy has developed and improved its building stock over a number of years and it should be noted that there is a wide variety of ages of building across the Academy estate. This will become apparent at the tender meeting / site visit. The cleaning service provision at St Thomas More Catholic Academy has not been market tested in recent years and to ensure Best Value principles are applied the Head Teacher and Senior Committee Members of the Academy have made a decision to tender the cleaning service. Current roll numbers are circa 1,100 students and the current cleaning operation is run in-house. The value of the contract is approximately £150,000 per annum and it is intended that the initial contract shall run for a period of 3 years, with a possible extension of up to 2 years by mutual agreement. For the avoidance of doubt TUPE Regulations will apply to this contract. The successful contractor will be expected to deliver a concise and detailed method of management reporting at the end of each month, thus updating the senior management team within the Academy on contract performance. It is imperative that an open book policy is offered to ensure the Academy has total clarity on both operational and financial performance. The Academy is seeking both innovation and the application of current cleaning techniques and up-to-date equipment within the tender submissions and would expect as a result of this to be able to identify ‘best value’ principles and work in partnership with the chosen contractor going forward. The Academy has set five key objectives which should be focused upon throughout the tender process. They are: • Ongoing savings year on year during the contract term. • The contract will be for 3 years initially, with the option of a 2 year extension, depending on operational and financial performance. • Review / suggestions to improve work methodology. Suggestions to improve the efficiency of service. • Due to the high percentage of hard flooring throughout the Academy it is believed specialist equipment will be required to maintain a high standard of cleanliness throughout. Recommendations and investment of this equipment should be included within the financial submission of the tender document. • The successful contractor must deliver a consistently high standards of cleanliness across the Academy.

Additional information: A reconciliation will take place monthly to reconcile the actual operating financial result to allow the Academy to see how the cleaning operation is performing financially. Any banked hours will be accrued and used to cover additional periodic cleans or credited back to the Academy at the end of each financial year.

Interest in the pre-qualification process should be expressed via email only to [email protected], clearly stating within this email which contract / notice you are referring to. Please also provide, as a minimum, a contact name, full company postal address and telephone number.

The pre-qualification questionnaire and associated documents can be obtained at: http://www.litmuspartnership.co.uk/project/st_thomas_more_catholic_academy

The closing date for receipt of the Pre-Qualification Questionnaire is 4.12.2015 (12:00). Tenderers are required to ensure that documents are obtained and returned to The Litmus Partnership Limited, by email to [email protected], by the above closing date and time.

Documents in respect of economic / financial standing (where indicated in the Pre-Qualification Questionnaire) shall be returned to The Litmus Partnership Limited, by email to [email protected], by the above closing date and time.

It will be the Tenderer’s responsibility to obtain any necessary documents in order to submit a response by the closing date and time.

The contracting authority reserves the right not to award any or part of the contract which is the subject of this OJEU notice and reserves the right to terminate the procurement process at any time.

The contracting authority will not be liable for any costs incurred by those expressing an interest in tendering for this contract opportunity.

The contracting authority will consider variant bids, evaluating them (so far as the variant or the evaluation of the variant is in the opinion of the contracting authority practicable) on the same basis as a conforming bid, but shall not be obliged to accept any such bid in preference to a conforming bid even if the variant bid scores more highly. No variant will be considered unless the bidder simultaneously submits a conforming bid.