Reprocuring HR Advice Services for a North East School and Sports College

A North East School and Sports College recognised the need to reprocure a HR Advice Service Provider in a compliant manner.  With an extensive and complex HR environment within the school, it was crucial to have a qualified service provider to inform the school’s decision-making and support best practices.  Value Match was engaged to provide structured and independent procurement support.  Through a below threshold competitive tender process and engagement with the school and relevant stakeholders, Value Match was able to deliver a compliant, cost-effective procurement process resulting in the appointment of a service provider with a higher quality service at a lower cost and added value to the school and their pupils.

Challenge

The School and Sports College were looking for support to reprocure a HR Advice Service Provider.

The current provision was coming to an end and the school recognised the need to reprocure the service, in a compliant manner. The extensive and complex HR environment within the school surrounding staffing, employment legislation, policies, practices, and the Department for Education (DfE) regulations meant that a qualified service provider was needed to inform the schools decision making and support best practices.

The school was looking to receive unique bids that were tailored to the school’s needs to deliver this vital service and how this service can provide relief support to the workload of internal staff allowing them to maximise their own time supporting the school directly.

Solution

Value Match provided structured and independent procurement support which included:

1. Completing a below threshold competitive tender process to provide a quick route to market to ensure we could meet customer deadlines.
2. Engaging with the school, and all the relevant stakeholders, to understand what key criteria should be included within the specification ensuring it met the internal HR department objectives.
3. Conducting early market engagement with potential suppliers to understand what the market could provide and finalising the specification based on market feedback.
4. Compiling the appropriate documentation.
5. Managing the tender and clarification process whilst maintaining appropriate records.
6. Providing evaluation training to the panel of school staff and governors.
7. Managing the technical and commercial evaluation process.
8. Providing project management and weekly briefings to the school to ensure they were continually updated on the process through to effective delivery.
9. Managing the contract award stage with evaluation reports provided to the school along with supplier notifications and debriefs provided.

Outcome

As a result of this procurement, the school were able to

1. Complete a compliant, cost-effective procurement process resulting in the most economically advantageous tender being awarded.
2. The appointment of a service provider that can deliver a higher quality service than previously received, at a lower cost.
3. The appointment of a service provider with a social value agenda outside of the core services such as careers fair, interview training sessions, providing work experience opportunities and supporting with debating or presentation competitions providing added value to the school and their pupils.
4. Achieve a saving of just under £23,500 over the 5-year contract period, demonstrating a 33% saving for the school against the previous HR Advice support service contract.

The project was completed with 8 weeks ensuring the school were able to fully mobilise in advance of the contract start date.