Highways England launch state-of-the-art tunnel management tech

The requirement

Tunnel operations across England traditionally use Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) based systems which are managed on a localised, individual basis. To achieve significant efficiency gains, Highways England required the procurement of a scalable Tunnel Control and Management System (TCMS) which will enable the centralised control of an increasing portfolio of tunnels, starting with the Southwick and Roundhill tunnels in the South East. Highways England currently manages 13 tunnels across the UK’s Strategic Road Network.

The TCMS solution needed to be procured in a way that ensured the TCMS can grow to manage assets of this size. The estimated total number of tunnel devices across the Strategic Road Network is 5,200.

The procurement of the TCMS presented the opportunity to improve numerous aspects of a standardised tunnel control system. Therefore, the TCMS procurement required a solution to be delivered which addressed these opportunities. It needed to conforms to Open Standards, which are recognised within the UK . An open system shall deliver interfaces in a way that ensures that future development can be implemented by alternative contractors. The platform needed to be scalable in order to easily adopt additional infrastructure where required including adding or removing tunnels management and the capacity to expand beyond the South East.

Highways England also required the solution to seamlessly integrate with its traffic management systems, e.g. Common Highways Agency and Rijkswaterstaat Model (CHARM), to support the control and management of mainline and tunnel technology, and be easily accessible and user friendly for a multitude of users across different services.

The solution

Highways England ran a competition via Lot 14 (Intelligent Transport Systems) of the CCS Traffic Management Technology 2 (TMT2) framework in 2017.

Highways England conducted pre-market engagement with suppliers on the framework, particularly market leaders in the tunnel management domain, to gain feedback on the requirements. 7 tenders were received, which shows the breadth of capability available on the framework. The contract is configurable and pre-populated, therefore reducing the time taken to prepare for a competition. Consulting and technology firm Indra was commissioned by Highways England to implement their TCMS for 13 tunnels.

The results

The contract has a maximum contract term of 12 years and an initial contract value of circa €10m.

Indra will equip tunnels with its HORUS smart management platform which will be deployed in the cloud so that it can be controlled from anywhere. The solution integrates Intelligent Traffic Systems (ITS) and safety systems, allowing for automated incident management. It offers operators real-time information and sees everything that occurs in the tunnel, meaning that decisions of when to turn on variable message signs to relieve congestion can be made quickly.

Get involved

To find out more about the TMT2 framework, you can:
View the framework page
Complete this online form
Call us on 0345 410 2222

General Optical Council drives transformation with IT services

The requirement

The General Optical Council (GOC) is the regulator for the optical professions in the UK. Its purpose is to protect the public by promoting high standards of education, conduct and performance amongst opticians.

The GOC’s IT department was faced with ongoing challenges around ensuring its services are accessible to its end users and that any associated data was protected and secure. This meant the majority of the GOC’s IT resource was being spent on keeping services online, backups running and that a disaster recovery plan was in place to meet the business’ service levels. The complexity of these solutions, and the disruption caused by testing them, often resulted in a drain on the GOC’s limited resources in terms of both its people and IT infrastructure.

After a full review of its IT services and strategy, the GOC made the decision to outsource the majority of its IT services. This decision was aimed at reducing and controlling costs whilst providing a more robust, secure and effective IT platform. This would in turn allow the Council’s own IT staff to focus on supporting the business and developing new and innovative ways of delivering against the GOC’s business goals.

The solution

The GOC ran a competitive process through the Crown Commercial Service Technology Services 2 (RM3804) framework for the Council’s IT managed services requirement. The framework’s tendering processes helped the GOC consider and set out its requirements in full so that suppliers had sufficient information to bid effectively.

The GOC awarded the contract to Celerity, one of Technology Services 2’s SME suppliers, after it had demonstrated its ability to provide a fully IT managed service including Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Back up as a Service (BaaS), Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) and IT service desk support.

Celerity’s IaaS solution means that the GOC is no longer responsible for any underlying hardware and can run its servers outside of its datacentre or on-premise where appropriate. This means the GOC does not have to invest the time required to maintain the hardware from a firmware or code level perspective and is not responsible for monitoring the hardware or raising hardware support calls where needed. Furthermore, the inherent risk around performing necessary upgrades or patches is offloaded to Celerity and any service disruption related to these elements can be avoided. As part of the GOC’s IT managed service, Celerity not only help with day-to-day IT administration tasks but it makes sure security remains a top priority through regular deployment of security patches. Celerity’s BaaS and DRaaS services also ensures the GOC’s data is fully protected and highly available to meet agreed service levels for ongoing business continuity.

The results

The GOC now has an infrastructure which is secure, fully compliant and resilient allowing for longer-term business planning to be achieved. Through its breadth of experience and professional IT services Celerity will achieve more efficient cost management and is now a trusted partner working alongside the Council to further enhance its business processes. As the costs are opex costs with no upfront hardware or infrastructure investments this ensures that the GOC has known and fixed costs for the duration of the contract.

Mark Webster, Director of Resources at the GOC, commented:

“Moving our IT services to Celerity gives us a robust and cost-effective solution that allows us to provide better customer service both internally and externally to the public and to the opticians we regulate. The transfer of our services to Celerity ran smoothly and we are finding them easy and professional to work with”.

By tendering through the Technology Services 2 RM3804 commercial agreement, the GOC has secured a contract with a quality assured supplier using rigorous, pre-defined contractual terms. The resulting contract with Celerity has achieved the following additional benefits:

  • Services are running on a more robust infrastructure utilising up to date technologies
  • More confidence in the back-up solution and the ability to provide disaster recovery
  • Disaster recovery testing without the risk, disruption or workload previously associated with it
  • Increased staff productivity with a focus on the business and time to plan for future business needs
  • Reduced costs and more efficient cost management
  • Enhanced security and compliance
  • Access to Celerity’s expertise allowing risk to be shared and reduced

Get involved

To find out more about the Technology Services 2 framework, you can:

View the framework page
Complete this online form
Call us on 0345 410 2222

SmartSurvey working with Department for Education

Customer:

Department of Education

Supplier:

SmartSurvey Limited

Contract Description

The Department for Education had a number of colleagues using a US-based survey platform but needed a UK-based alternative which meets the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) introduced in 2018. SmartSurvey stores data in the UK, is GDPR compliant and holds ISO27001 and Cyber Essentials Plus certification.

Contract delivery area:

UK-wide

Contract value for SME:

£124,000

Contract details

CCS Framework through which business was won:

G-Cloud 9

Supplier Factfile

SME:

SmartSurvey Limited

CEO:

Mo Naser

What the company does:

SmartSurvey is a Software as a Service (SaaS) platform that helps individuals, charities, businesses and government organisations by simplifying the collection of data through the power of the web. It is used in consultations, customer satisfaction, employee feedback, assessments, academic research, training evaluation, and much more. SmartSurvey offers a dedicated personal service to its customers and, importantly, stores data in the UK.

Company HQ:

Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire

Website:

https://www.smartsurvey.co.uk

Social Media:

Facebook LinkedIn Twitter

Annual turnover of company:

£2 million+

Number of employees:

16

Type of SME:

Small

Supplier Experience

In relation to the contract awarded, how did you find the procurement process?

We found the procurement process very straightforward. Crown Commercial Service has taken feedback from suppliers like us, who only have small teams, to make the process simple. Unlike big organisations, we don’t have dedicated staff to manage procurement processes, so we had to learn from scratch. But the G-Cloud framework gave us a way to sell our services to the Department for Education from a single, central website. We started off on G-Cloud 5, so we’ve seen how it has evolved over the years and can say that G-Cloud 9, which we used here, was by far the simplest framework to use.

What worked well and what could have been done better?

The simplicity of going through the call-off contract which we received from the client worked really well, as did having everything we needed to know laid out clearly in front of us. It also helped that the client had previous experience dealing with G-Cloud orders. The process was much easier than we expected it to be.

What benefit does your company receive from supplying to the public sector?

As a small UK company, the biggest benefit of supplying to the public sector is that it gives us the opportunity to help improve our country. We feel as though we are contributing to making our public services more efficient through the services we provide.

The experience we’ve gained by learning new things along the way has paid dividends. For example, we now know a lot more about the structure within central and local government, which helps us plan out our marketing efforts. Working with the public sector has also given us a lot of confidence to sell to the private sector. We now have many public sector customers and this really gives us an edge and makes us stand out from the crowd. Many private companies feel more assured to work with us as a result of successfully delivering projects to government departments.

What was/is/will be the outcome of the contract for the client?

The Department for Education can now feel confident they used a UK-based, secure and compliant tool to create online surveys and forms.

Furthermore, the contract has allowed the Department to consolidate its spend on such online tools by purchasing an Enterprise account, where they can add more licences as and when they wish, at a fixed price.

How would you like to work with the public sector in the future?

In the same way we do now. It works well, so there’s no need to change anything now we are on G-Cloud 10. G-Cloud has already proved to be successful for us, even though it only recently went live. We already have over £100k worth of business due to go through G-Cloud 10 in the coming weeks.

Data and Application Solutions framework launches

Our Data and Application Solutions (DAS) framework is now open for business and ready to help public sector organisations to buy a broad range of software solutions. The framework has been designed to allow you to buy, implement, test and deliver software as well as the necessary hardware and professional services, under one procurement.

80 suppliers have been awarded a place on the framework, 46% of which are SMEs. DAS is segmented into 5 groups to make it easier to find what you are looking for. The 14 lots cover the following areas:

  1. Enterprise applications,
  2. Local government
  3. Health and social care
  4. Police and emergency services
  5. Education

As well as offering cloud and on-premise software or a combination of both, DAS also allows customers the choice of further competition or direct award depending on the nature of the requirement:

  • For example, a customer could run a further competition for HR and Finance modules as well as a compatible ERP application. In addition to software licenses the customer can also include the installation and implementation to integrate into their environment as well as ongoing support and maintenance of the software.

OR

  • Using direct award the customer could buy a support renewal for a software product that can only be placed directly with the publisher (i.e. where no alternative support routes exist or are commercially viable). This can be accessed through the catalogue hosted on our Government eMarketplace platform.

Quote from Ben Paynter, Category Director:

“Data and Application Solutions builds on the legacy of the Local Authority Software Applications and Corporate Software Solutions agreements, whilst also allowing the Crown Commercial Service to serve new customers in Health, Blue Light and Education.

The agreement has been designed following extensive engagement with both customers and suppliers. This is the first framework by CCS that gives customers the choice to buy cloud and on-premise software or a combination of both under one agreement. It also allows customers to buy software alongside necessary hardware and professional services, in one procurement. 

By listening to the needs of customers and combining a mix of suppliers that will drive competition, DAS offers a value for money route to market for software led solutions.”

To find out more about DAS or if you have a specific question simply complete our form quoting RM3821 and one of our technology experts will be in touch.

Welcome to the new online home of Crown Commercial Service

Hello and welcome to the new online home of Crown Commercial Service.

Whether you’re familiar with our work or new to public sector procurement, please take a little time to look around our site.

The changes we’ve made are based on your feedback. We’ve addressed some of the problems you’ve had in the past and we’ve been inspired by some of the suggestions you’ve made.

Improving customer journeys

You may notice we’ve kept all that was useful from our old home at ccs-agreements.cabinetoffice.gov.uk, including the framework contents and pipeline pages.

But we believe we’ve developed a much more satisfying experience for users, making it even easier for customers and suppliers to find exactly what they need all in one place.

Among the changes you’ll notice are:

  • Framework details can now be filtered by category
  • Procurement pipeline pages are displayed as ‘Upcoming deals’
  • New and comprehensive help and guidance for first time users about our routes to market and how to buy from our frameworks, catalogues and portals
  • More detailed and dynamic news pages

This website is your single source for everything you need from Crown Commercial Service.

It has been designed around our customers and suppliers because we want to make public sector procurement simple.

We really hope you like it. Please do let us know what you think.

Supply teachers deal has gone digital

The supply teachers deal has gone digital for schools and academies in England following the launch by Education Secretary Damian Hinds on 15 January.

Have you seen the announcement from Education Secretary Damian Hinds today (15 January) officially launching our new agency selection tool? In it he said:

“I want to help schools use their resources as effectively as possible. There will always be a role for supply teachers within schools, but schools shouldn’t be ripped off when trying to recruit them. This new online tool will bring much-needed transparency to the fees that agencies charge to enable school leaders to see what they are getting for their money.”

Read the announcement in full and access the online version of the agency selection tool with your DfE Sign-in.

Not in England?

We’re working hard to give schools, academies and other educational organisations based in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland access to the digital version too. In the meantime, please continue to use the offline Excel version. Many more suppliers have been added since the framework launched at the end of August, so please get in touch if you’d like a copy of the latest version of the tool.

Whether you’re accessing the digital or offline version of the agency selection tool the benefits of the deal remain the same. As one school has found:

“The supply teachers deal is an easy to use and effective resource. It has reduced workload and helped us save £2,500 in 3 months. The agency selection tool makes rate comparison easy, so we know we are getting best value. The deal also gives us reassurance that the necessary safeguarding checks have been done.” 
Rob Owens, Director of Finance and Operations, Rainhill High School

Meet the team

We hope that the agency selection tool and simple short order form will make it easy for you to source the temporary staff you need cost effectively, efficiently and compliantly. However, rest assured that there is plenty of help and guidance available too.

Jenny Nugent, Tom Harper and myself all joined CCS about 5 months ago. Our role is to help you get the best value for money through the supply teachers deal, and we’re passionate about supporting school business leaders. We work alongside John Wilson and Christine Morton, who worked closely with DfE to develop the deal.

Miranda Broadley, Jenny Nugent and Tom Harper
Miranda, Jenny and Tom

I joined CCS after graduating from the University of St. Andrews with a degree in French and Spanish, and Tom has previously spent 2½ years working in temporary recruitment giving him an in-depth understanding of the agency market. Jenny has spent “more years than she cares to remember” (her words not mine!) working in the agency supplier market, and her specialist knowledge includes framework tendering, business development and customer relationship management. She also has experience of framework auditing and managing performance against compliance standards.

We also have a great customer service team, who are on hand to answer any of your framework queries. They have lots of knowledge of the supply teachers deal, however, if they can’t answer your question they will pass it on to Jenny, Tom or myself.

We’re here to help

You can learn more about the deal by visiting the supply teachers web page

Got a question?

CCS and NHS Procurement in Partnership join together in workforce alliance

Crown Commercial Service (CCS) and NHS Procurement in Partnership are coming together in collaboration to deliver the Flexible Resource Pool – Staff Bank Services contract for the NHS and other public sector bodies.

Customers and suppliers will benefit from a strong partnership that brings together CCS, as the biggest public procurement organisation in the UK, combined with the extensive expertise and experience that NHS Procurement in Partnership has in the NHS.

NHS Procurement in Partnership is a four hub collaboration between NHS Commercial Solutions, East of England NHS Collaborative Procurement Hub, NHS North of England Commercial Procurement Collaborative and NHS London Procurement Partnership, previously known as NHS Collaborative Procurement Partnership (CPP).

This announcement updates the publication of the CCS strategy for the health workforce sector last summer.

Our intention is for CCS and NHS Procurement in Partnership to work closely together, focusing on the forward strategy for the health workforce sector, starting with the re-procurement of Flexible Resource Pool – Staff Bank. The contract notice will be released in February 2019.

CCS and NHS Procurement in Partnership will be exploring the whole portfolio of health workforce services, including temporary clinical and non-clinical agency workers, with the intent to partner on the procurement, delivery, and management of these services. A full schedule of the planned phases of procurement will be communicated to our customers and suppliers in due course.

Got a question? Please get in touch:

Seven year framework for Government and public sector development projects launched

A new funding framework has been developed to allow construction firms, small and large, the chance to bid for work on government projects over the next seven years.

The Construction Works and Associated Services commercial agreement will assist central Government and the wider public sector with projects focused on the construction, refurbishment, repair, demolition or decommission of public buildings across the UK.

The framework has been designed by Crown Commercial Service (CCS) to provide customers and suppliers with the assurances required for long-term projects, and make sure the Government gets best value for money.

John Welch, CCS’s Deputy Director for Construction, said:

This agreement will support construction and drive industry growth.

Its lotting structure has been designed to maximise opportunities for all sizes of company and that includes SMEs, which play a key role in UK construction.

For example, standardised payment terms and other fair payment objectives are embedded within the framework scope. This agreement also facilitates the use of digitisation in construction and promotes the use of innovative solutions via modern methods of construction.

It is estimated that over the seven year life of the framework, the cost of the works carried out across the country could be up to £30bn or less – with the projects led by departments and the money taken from existing departmental budgets.

The framework has been designed with flexibility in mind to service a range of construction and civil engineering requirements across both central government and the wider public sector.

Prompt payment initiatives and project bank accounts (PBA’s) have been incorporated into the framework to support supply chains. Policy like this is embedded throughout to help sustain and grow the market whatever the size of the organisation, but is particularly useful for SMEs and specialist suppliers.

Get involved

Suppliers interested in bidding for this opportunity have to register on the CCS eSourcing system. Instructions on how to access the CCS eSourcing system can be viewed along with the tender documentation by visiting the project webpage:

The tender period went live on 31st January 2019. A bidders’ day will take place on Friday 8th February 2019, details are provided within the OJEU Contract Notice.

SmartSourcing winning government contracts

Customers:

FCO Services, House of Commons, ESFA, DfE, NHWIS, DIO, Cabinet Office, NCA, MOD, NICE, Gangmasters, IPCC, National Criminal Intelligence Service

Supplier:

SmartSourcing Plc

Contract description

This is a commercial agreement that can be used by any Central Government and Wider Public Sector clients (including the NHS) to meet their temporary staffing needs for both ‘blue’ and ‘white’ collar workers at all levels of staff grade.

Contract delivery area:

UK Wide

Contract value for SME:

£15million

CCS Framework:

Non Medical Non Clinical – Lot 5 IT Professionals Supply

Supplier factfile

SME:

SmartSourcing Plc

Managing Director:

Judith Hall

Date company established:

January 2002

What the company does:

Specialist Recruitment Services throughout the UK. Our core areas of delivery are across: Permanent, Temporary and Interim resource in the fields of: Information Technology, Project Management, Business Change, Digital, Cyber Security and other related areas.

Company HQ:

Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire

Website:

www.smartsourcing.plc.uk

Annual turnover of company:

£28,000,000

Number of employees:

25

Type of SME:

Medium

Social media:

*Twitter: @SmartSourcingUK

*LinkedIn: SmartSourcing plc

*Facebook: @SmartSourcingUK

Supplier’s experience

In relation to the contract awarded, how did you find the procurement process?

When we undertook the procurement process in 2015 we found the tendering exercise for NMNC to be a refreshing change from other public sector bids previously undertaken. We found it very straightforward.

The procurement process was driven by compliance to framework requirements which played to our strengths. From an SME perspective this enabled us to complete a simple process with ease, within sensible timescales and without draining internal resources.

The exercise utilised an online portal for submission (Bravo Solutions) which we found to be a user friendly platform, allowing smooth engagement and submission of the required information.

Crown Commercial Service managed the whole process very efficiently and professionally.

What worked well and what could have been done better?

We felt the whole process worked well. As a SME, the simplified process helped us to reduce excessive staffing hours producing response documents.

What benefit does your company receive from supplying to the public sector?

SmartSourcing is highly experienced in supplying staffing resource to the Public Sector. By working with the Public Sector, our company has been able to grow with accompanying internal job creation – 75% of our turnover has been generated by our work with it. As a SME, we also benefit from the Public Sector’s commitment to prompt payment.

What was/is/will be the outcome of the contract for the client?

The Public Sector benefits from our low cost, high quality and dynamic approach. The NMNC framework allows us to engage with our clients directly and effectively.

How would you like to work with the public sector in the future?

We would welcome the opportunity for further SME engagement through simplified routes such as Dynamic Purchasing Systems and technology driven solutions for procurement or continued use of direct supply SME friendly frameworks.

Customer testimonial

Smartsourcing have enabled us to fill a variety temporary posts including Project Support Officers, Senior Delivery Managers and IT Service Managers. They are able to source candidates for roles across England and turn the requirements around quickly.

Victoria Spinner, Contracts Manager, Department for Education

Digital buying community hits the North

After the success of the last digital buying community meetup which was attended by over 120 buyers at Tech UK in London on 16 January 2019, we are really excited to announce that we will be taking our next event to DWP Manchester on 2 May 2019.

This event offers a great opportunity to network with and support a peer group of buyers from the public and third sector, to enable knowledge to be shared, common challenges to be discussed and solutions to be developed.

We have a great line-up of activities for this session, including an introduction from Craig MacDonald, Chief Digital and Technology Officer at CCS, plus a jam packed itinerary of team building and engagement sessions to discuss topics surrounding working as a multidisciplinary team, how to challenge culture, the importance of pre tender market engagement, awareness of accessibility and procurement and much more.

How can you get involved?

This event provides everyone involved with a fantastic opportunity to celebrate the procurement profession, share knowledge and expertise and agree best practices.

If you’re on the digital journey and wish to be part of our forthcoming event, simply fill out this form stating ‘2 May digital buying community’ in the comments box to receive an invite.

Look forward to seeing you there.

Emilia Cedeno, Category Manager, Technology.