Recruitment
“The IP Signalling Southern West Tendering Team for Cornwall Phase 1 had to carry out a competitive sourcing event compliant with stricter EU levels of compliance and maintain auditable records that would guarantee no funding deductions following an EU Funding Audit with a Tender Events Programme on the Critical Path throughout. Contract award for a GRIP 4B – 8 D&C Contract was critical and constrained by a commissioning possession commitment in October 2018.
Stricter Utilities Contracts Regulations 2016 came into effect at the end of 2016. Network Rail had no experience of tendering to this legislation or prepared Pre-Qualification or Tendering templates. This Project was the first to tender within Network Rail for complex works under this revised legislation.
The Project Team had to work with Lawyers to produce Pre-Qualification Instructions, a Pre-Qualification Questionnaire (PQQ), a scoring guidance methodology (for the PQQ & Tender), and Tender Instructions.
To maintain the Programme and guarantee success the following had to be achieved:
• Tender Pre-Qualification and Tender documentation, the entire tender, needed to be finalised prior to publication of the Contract Notice on OJEU (Official Journal of the European Union).
• Tender engagement briefings to explain roles & responsibilities to those functional specialists leading & supporting the tender evaluation, to launch the process and engage with those participating.
• Detail justification from lead evaluators of comments and scores to provide feedback to the tenderers.
During the tender period 2 unplanned site visits took place. 247 tender issues identified & addressed & 10 Tender Addenda issues made.
The programme encountered 3 weeks of cumulative delay events during the tender period.
To overcome these challenges, to maintain the tender programme and audit trail and to ensure the project avoided a contract award challenge, the team worked tirelessly to achieve the deadlines and worked collaboratively with all disciplines to make sure all requirements were identified and fulfilled.“
“Well done last Saturday, an excellent evening for which a great deal of planning and hard work had gone into the event and thoroughly enjoyable.”
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