As a registered social landlord (RSL), we’re legislatively bound by the Public Contract Regulations, the Regulator of Social Housing and Homes England.
We’ve outlined our procurement process below and you can find more about which frameworks we work with and how we work on our suppliers page.
How we procure
- Early engagement or Request for Information
- Spend analysis
- Supplier consolidation
- Working with internal stakeholders to define the requirement
- Market testing
- Preparing advertisements, invitations to tender and evaluation criteria
- Placing advertisements
- Receiving expressions of interest
- Selecting potential suppliers
- Despatching invitation to tender documents
- Opening tender responses at a specified date and time
- Evaluating tenders according to the process outlined in the tender
- Agreeing rankings
- Visiting and/or interviewing suppliers
- Making the final selection
- Awarding contracts and notifying bidders
- Debriefing unsuccessful bidders on request
- Completion of contract
- Mobilisation
Keep in mind that this process isn’t set in stone – it can change depending on what we’re procuring and the value of the contract. No matter what we’re looking for, companies bidding for work will be given a specification and a request for a financial quotation.
Procurement will always be fair and open, and we make records at each stage so that the procedure is fully auditable too.
Where it’s relevant we try to include residents and leaseholders in the process. This might be for contracts such as communal cleaning, grounds maintenance or anything related to service charges.
The dropdowns show you what happens at each stage and what the goal of each stage is too:
Pre-tender
- New idea or renew and refresh existing
- Scope out market options
- Establish supply base
- Establish ‘must haves’
- Establish stakeholders
- Identifying:
- the opportunity
- the market position
- commodities position
- the benchmark
- spend analysis
- the specification
- design elements
- Capturing our requirements
- Setting out goals/objectives
- Retrieving initial commercials
- Early supplier engagement
Tender
- Preparing advertisements, invitations to tender and evaluation criteria
- Receiving expressions of interest
- Making the final selection
- Placing advertisements
- Opening tender responses at a specified date and time
- Supplier selection process
- Tender evaluation
- Agree rankings
- Visiting and/or interviewing suppliers
Contract award
- Awarding the contract
- Completing the contract
- Notifying bidders of award
- Debriefing unsuccessful bidders on request
- Finalising contract with successful supplier(s)
Mobilisation ‘launch’
- Go live
- Monitor performance
- Review performance
- Fixed date review
- Review:
- Weekly
- Monthly
- Annual
- Providing performance update
- Business feedback
- Customer feedback
Handy information
You’ll now know how we work with suppliers and contractors, our process and how to register to be alerted to new tenders. If you want to know more about us, take a look at the handy links.