Grounds Maintenance Tendering
Resident Consultation
Work on re-tendering our grounds maintenance
service is now almost complete. We are hoping to have the new
contractor(s) in place by 1 April 2010.
The work started last summer when we sent out
a questionnaire to all residents who receive a grounds maintenance
service asking them for their comments on the current service and
for a revised specification of works. Around 3,000
questionnaires were sent out and the response was brilliant with
570 survey forms being returned.
The Planned and Response Repairs Review group
(PARRR), which is an officer and resident group, nominated a ‘sub
group’ to work on the re-tendering exercise with our consultant,
Peter Bird. In order to get representation across the stock
some other residents were invited to join the sub-group. The
sub-group used the comments from the survey to produce the new
specification.
The next step was to carry
out a formal consultation exercise with residents who pay a service
charge for their grounds maintenance service. This is a legal
requirement. At the same time we also carried included all
other residents who receive a grounds maintenance service as we
felt this was good practice and would help ensure that all views
were taken into account.
A number of constructive comments came out of
the consultation and the sub-group agreed further changes to the
specification of works.
While all this was going on we advertised for
expressions of interest in the new contract and 28 companies
replied. The sub-group had agreed a scoring method for doing
the short listing and eight contractors were invited to submit a
tender for the work. Three decided not to submit a
tender.
Those tendering were asked to submit prices
for the work and answer questions that were designed to allow the
sub-group to judge the quality of the organisations and three
references were taken up for each organisation.
The tender submissions were assessed by the
sub-group who evaluated these three aspects: price, quality and
references.
Those tendering were asked to price for three
levels of service: a standard agreed by the residents’ group, an
enhanced service and a reduced service. The work has been
split into three contract areas:
- Dorset
- North Devon and North Somerset
- South Devon and South Somerset
Before awarding the contracts we are legally required to carry out
a final consultation exercise with those residents who pay a
variable service charge for the service. Again, in order to
make sure that all our residents have an opportunity to comment, we
are also consulting with all other residents who receive a grounds
maintenance service.
This final round of consultation ends
on 19 March 2010. We will then take account of those comments
made prior to awarding the contracts.
All residents included in this final round of
consultation have been sent a number of documents including to
following PDF documents for you to download:
They have also been sent details of the tender
submissions from those contractors who submitted a price for their
specific contract area and have been short listed for final
consideration.
Comments have been invited either in writing
or by sending Helen Oram an
email. If you are commenting by email please don’t forget
to tell us which contractor area you live in.