Estate Management and Capital Accounting System TED Ref: 2016/S 129-231382.

Cornwall Council is responsible for the management of a significant property estate. Its assets include a wide variety of operational and commercial properties such as offices, libraries, leisure centres, social care properties, schools, industrial estates, business centres, depots, public open space, ports and harbours, heritage buildings, art galleries, a mine and an airport. The book value of the estate is £1.9 billion and consists of over 1,600 sites and 6,500 separate buildings.

The Council's property function operates a 'commissioning model' with the commissioning teams supported by a range of internal and external delivery teams covering estate management, facilities management and maintenance disciplines. The current structure has been in place since 2014 but the software solutions used to manage the various property disciplines have yet to be consolidated; the estates function currently uses the CIPFA Asset Manager System which is also used by the Council's finance department to undertake the capital accounting asset management and valuation requirements. Facilities management is predominantly managed without a dedicated specialist software system and the maintenance function operates using several contractor owned systems.

The current maintenance framework expires 31st March 2017 and a tender for new framework contract will be issued in July 2016. The user licence agreement for the CIPFA system expires 31st May 2017. The expiry of these two contracts provides the Council with an opportunity to consolidate the various estate and property management systems into a single, specialist software solution which will for the first time provide the Council with access to all property data within a single system. It is anticipated that the solution will lead to improvements in the quality of data held and working practices across the property function.

The Council requires an externally hosted solution that shall have significant functionality in terms of workflows, helpdesk and reporting covering all property disciplines. The Council's finance system is Oracle ERP and it is envisaged that the solution will interface with this system to improve income and expenditure management. The Council envisages that the use of bar codes/QR codes or similar will increasingly be employed to assist in the management of its contractors and to this end the need for a solution that shall allow for asset tagging and the use of handheld devices to access and complete works instructions will be of great importance.

The tender has been structured to allow separate bids for the estates and capital accounting requirements, or for a solution covering the full range of the Council's requirements. If separate solutions for estates and capital accounting are selected then interfaces allowing the transfer of asset data and of year end valuations will be required.

Additional information: The procurement documents are available for unrestricted and full direct access, free of charge, at: www.supplyingthesouthwest.org.uk