Published
South Suffolk Learning Trust had a requirement to appoint one supplier for building cleaning services across all sites to help streamline the process and drive better value for money.
The Trust which consists of Claydon High School, Claydon Primary School, Hadleigh High School, Easy Bergholt High School and Colchester Academy, engaged CPC to conduct a tendering process based on one supplier being appointed across five sites. Previously there was a mixture of three different incumbents and an inhouse provision across the Trust, with varying levels of service provided.
"Luke has been amazing throughout this experience, he is a credit to CPC and I’m very lucky to have him supporting me through this, so thank you again.”"
Our Strategy
CPC's approach was to assign our locally based Senior Procurement Consultant Luke Wood to the project. Luke used his extensive cleaning procurement expertise and was able to understand the organisations' aims and objectives. Luke recommended the most effective route to market which was CPC's Building Cleaning Services framework. This route gave South Suffolk Learning Trust access to 12 pre-vetted suppliers with excellent education sector experience and ensured the new contract start date of 1st October 2020 could be met successfully.
Our Expertise
We developed a bespoke specification that included the individual site requirements and provided consistent procurement consultancy support throughout the process. Luke collated TUPE and pension information, liaised with suppliers, developed individual specifications, ran site visits, evaluated tenders, created a recommendation report and developed contract documents. Luke ensured the process was compliant and utilised his excellent understanding of the service and sector to provide the Trust advice and guidance throughout the process.
"This was an interesting project to work on which required lots of work initially to ensure the specifications were as standardised as possible across the sites, whilst still ensuring the individual requirements were factored in. The emergence of Covid-19 complicated the project somewhat, delaying the timetable and leading the site visits to be rescheduled. However, I worked closely with the Trust to ensure that despite the delay, the contract start date was still met. My work on the contract resulted in the Trust appointing one supplier across the Trust. This ensures a holistic approach will be adopted across the Trust going forward, whilst also reducing the combined administrative/management workload (and associated costs) for all of the individual schools.”"
The Outcome
CPC successfully navigated a complex project with different specifications and requirements across five sites. An experienced education sector cleaning specialist was appointed to improve the cleaning standards and provide a standardised approach to the cleaning service across the Trust. Cost savings were achieved by economies of scale and appointing a single supplier reduced the Trust's time spent managing multiple suppliers and inhouse services providing further savings on administration and management time.