Background
Exceed Academies Trust required a supplier to provide catering services for a number of the schools within the Bradford area. The Trust was seeking a supplier who had experience of working within the Primary and Secondary school market place, ideally with a strong operational base within the North of England, thus allowing for responsive, contract support and management of catering staff.
The successful supplier was to be required to formally report each month on catering standard performance and operational matters, ensuring the schools’ senior management team was fully informed about all issues related to delivery of the catering services.
Brief
With the catering tender it was important to the client that Litmus ensured:
- A fair process was entered into with transparency throughout;
- Both the tender and the subsequent contract were fully transparent and detailed;
- Representatives from all schools were to be brought into the process to feedback on the quality of the bids and presentations; and
- After the tender provide ongoing dedicated monitoring of the contracted service to ensure compliance with the contract.
Approach
Nick Thompson, the Litmus Partnership, said: “It was important that we found a supplier who could deliver an imaginative and flexible service that was also cost-effective. The tender followed the full OJEU process, with all companies passing through the PQQ stage being invited to tender for the catering services.
“We reviewed the current services being provided, and developed a specification for the new tender. Once all the bids were received, we summarised each and managed the presentations receiving input from all stakeholders.”
Outcomes
A new catering tender was put in place, with Litmus continuing to work with Exceed Academies Trust delivering an ongoing monitoring service using the Litmus Account Team and also an ongoing qualitative monitoring service as the new contract got underway.
