Procurement support

The project issues
Sunderland Teaching Primary Care Trust (STPCT) is an innovative trust that has invested in the provision of ICT within its health community. As part of an Oral Health IT Strategy they outlined a plan to deliver a full IT infrastructure for dental practices within Sunderland and their Community Dental Service. Part of this infrastructure delivery included the provision of a clinical system for all dentists treating NHS patients. STPCT elected to run the service in-house. It still needed to procure the system and associated support and implementation services. These were estimated to be above the EU thresholds and they sought support and guidance from Socitm Consulting to ensure the procurement was compliant with the EU regime. In addition, as part of the NHS they are expected to use the NHS standard contracts SYSCON and SSCON.

The Socitm Consulting solution
The Socitm Consulting proposal was to provide general advice and guidance and to support the project manager in planning and managing the procurement process. Both on-site and telephone support were employed to provide mentoring, advice, guidance on various aspects of the procurement process and EU compliance. We also provided a review of the overall process and quality assurance of the evaluation process through to the standstill period. We used the STPCT ITT as a basis for draft schedules within the NHS SYSCON agreement that eventually formed the basis of the contractual agreement.

We provided support in the early planning stages to enable STPCT to issue an OJEU notice and shortlist suppliers. We then became closely involved in the evaluation and analysis of the scoring by various groups. A sensitivity analysis was used to cross check the scoring by the panel of users.

We attended the supplier meetings as the schedules were negotiated and advised STPCT on various aspects and how they related to the SYSCON agreement, in particular around responsibilities and support.

The benefits to the client
The client had the close support of a consultant experienced in procurement and evaluation of proposals. The project manager was able to focus on the local issues secure in the knowledge that process was compliant, and that redrafting and reviewing was taking place; in particular, that ITT responses were incorporated into the contract schedules. The process was independently monitored and validated.

Project identification
Client organisation: Sunderland Teaching Primary Care Trust
Client contact: Janet Turner, Project Manager, 0191 5297254, janet.turner@suntpct.nhs.uk 
Lead consultant: terry.street@socitm.gov.uk
Project no: 5667