Minds matter – using social value to tackle mental health in construction

Updated: August 2023

Our Category Lead, Clare Chamberlain, discussed the importance of social value in your construction projects and gave top tips on how to ensure it’s not missed off the list.

Here, Jasmine Evans, Commercial Agreements Manager – Construction, as a mental health first aider, shows why it’s important to increase the awareness of mental health in the sector and how to incorporate it into the social value requirements of your construction projects.

The lay of the land

The construction industry is vital to the UK economy. According to government statistics, the country’s 1 million construction firms employ 2.4 million people and the sector contributed £117bn in 2018 to the nation’s economy.

In construction, physical health is often seen as the most important thing, with signs everywhere reminding people to wear safety equipment and hundreds of hours are devoted to safety training. But mental health can be affected just as much as physical health through heavy workloads, long working hours, high-risk physical tasks, and often a lack of routine, frequent travelling, being separated from family, and working in isolation. As construction workers are also contract-based, anxiety can be triggered by a lack of job security or steady income.

Did you know…?

  • Depression and anxiety within the construction industry has increased by 10% from 2016-2017, with a fifth of all cases of ill health in the sector stemming from mental health issues. Consequently, over 400,000 work days are lost each year. [HSE: Construction statistics in Great Britain, 2018]

And according to a new report from the Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB)

  • 26% of construction industry professionals thought about taking their own lives in 2019 – before the COVID-19 pandemic had hit the industry – and 97% recorded being stressed at least once since
  • Over 30% of all construction sites have no hot water, and no toiletry facilities for workers. All these things have an impact on mental health and wellbeing.
  • In a survey of over 2,000 construction industry professionals, stress (97%) was the most common mental health issue felt over the past year.
  • Many experience mental health problems due to late payment of invoices, affecting payment of their supply chain – as a result 80% had experienced stress, 40% experienced anxiety and/or panic attacks, and 36% experienced depression. 
  • 56% of construction professionals work for organisations with no policies on mental health in the workplace. 

Building minds up

Fortunately, the industry itself is becoming more aware of these issues and the mental health culture within workplaces is slowly starting to see change.

There are now employee assistance programmes such as the ‘Construction Industry Helpline’ that can provide instant help on a variety of issues around wellbeing via their phone and new mobile app. 

Initiatives such as Mates in Mind, is a recently-launched leading UK charity that enables UK construction organisations, of any size, to improve their workforces’ mental health and has the backing of the British Safety Council, the Health in Construction Leadership Group, and the Samaritans. 

Employers are also now signing up to Building Mental Health Charters to demonstrate their commitment to promoting awareness and understanding of mental health as well as lowering stigma, and training up mental health first aiders to support their employees.

But there’s more support that public sector organisations can show, whilst also tackling wider issues that impact us all.

Using your procurement practices to support – social value tackling health inequalities

The Social Value Act came into force in January 2013, and requires public sector commissioners – including local authorities and health sector bodies – to consider economic, social and environmental wellbeing in procurement of services contracts.

The recent policy note highlights changes that mean, from January 2021, public sector buyers are required to think differently about how they can secure social value from the goods and services they buy for their local area and/or stakeholders. One of the ways you can do this is to consider incorporating health into the social value requirements of your new construction projects.

Creating social value has clear connections with efforts to reduce health inequalities through action on the social determinants of health – for example, by improving employment and housing. It creates a new opportunity and potential to use local and national commissioning to support improvements in the health and wellbeing of local people and in the longer term reduce the demand on health services and other services.

Public Health England (PHE) commissioned the UCL Institute of Health Equity (IHE) to assess the potential of the Social Value Act to support action to reduce health inequalities and has produced guidance around this which seeks to encourage, support and improve implementation of the Social Value Act in relation to reducing health inequalities and provide examples of it’s application in practice.

To implement these social value aims within your tenders and working practices, some initial ideas could be: 

  • contractors to sign up to the Building Mental Health Charter
  • contractors to aim to have the recommended minimum Mental Health First Aiders trained based on number of employees
  • contractor’s management tier to have all undertaken a form of Mental Health awareness training in order to look after their staff appropriately
  • contractors to have a dedicated Mental Health support program in place for their organisation ie Employee Assistance Programme 
  • urging Contractors to have in place a diverse workforce for their projects 
  • enforcing compliance with payment terms for the whole supply chain
  • mandate a standard level of working facilities for contractor workers to improve their working conditions 

For further ideas on how to incorporate mental health considerations into your project you may want to consider the new Social Value Model which has suggestions on how to further include it in your tender and offers useful evaluation metrics. 

Learn more about social value

Visit our social value webpage or get in touch with our expert team to find out more about social value and how it’s embedded into our agreements.

More: You can now find all of our Procurement Essentials articles in one place on our website.

Next steps

For more advice and guidance on tackling social value in construction projects please fill in our short online form and one of our commercial experts will be in touch. 

You can also explore our full range of construction frameworks on our dedicated construction web page.

Further policy advice and guidance on social value can be found on GOV.UK. 

Plugging the revenue gap – media ROI and savings in 2021

What’s the potential issue?

As organisations enter 2021 there is a need to protect marketing budgets and plug potential revenue gaps left from the economic headwinds of 2020. Marketers’ performance and subsequently their agencies’ performance will come under even more scrutiny than ever before; either prove your marketing spend is working, or risk losing it.

For the 3rd quarter in a row of 2020, the IPA Bellwether report showed that UK Ad spend had dipped dramatically versus the same time of the year before. Historically marketing spend has been used as a measure for consumer, as well as economic confidence, given the fact that marketers have had to deal with the combined impact of the COVID-19 restrictions and the Brexit deadline on consumer spend this is no surprise. What has surprised many however has been the depth and swiftness of these budget cuts – the quickest and the most sustained decline in the report’s 20-year history. 

Is there anything I can do about it?

Plan for the recovery now rather than waiting until later! Every downturn presents an opportunity for all those involved to re-architect their current marketing models, approaches, and tools to get ready for the turnaround; to be able to hit the ground running and to have established new performance frameworks, which future-proof against subsequent disruption.

Where do I start?

Since March 2020 the MediaSense Consortium have been working alongside CCS to build a performance framework that supports all public sector advertising. The consortium spans media, creative, production and compliance auditing to ensuring that:

  • Consistent measurable objectives and a means of scoring/evaluating progress are set following the Evaluation Framework of Inputs – Outputs – Outtakes – Outcomes
  • The media plans developed are focused on delivering the greatest value against set KPIs
  • The campaign is audited both “as live” and retrospectively to ensure funds are invested appropriately and delivery is benchmarked externally

So how does this help me?

There are three main benefits of adopting this type of performance framework; qualified best practice, quantified added value and risk mitigation intervention.

Qualified Best Practice:

Each stage of the campaign, creation, development and implementation, is scrutinised and challenged. All decisions are therefore fully transparent and recorded. Once complete this record forms the playbook next time round, creating a marketing environment driven by efficiency and effectiveness.

Quantified Added Value:

Both the planning and buying action logs create added value opportunities that can be quantified; each action/resolution carries with it a cost saving.

Risk Mitigation:

MediaSense’s professional oversight of planning and buying implementation provides intervention and course correction, protecting the client.

How does this ‘live auditing’ actually work?

We do this by ensuring that every part of the marketing/media value chain is scrutinised, that the planning process is managed, and that recommendations and optimisations are implemented inflight.

  1. At the beginning of the campaign cycle we review and evaluate all key media agency deliverables (strategy documents, media briefs and RTBs/media plans) within 24 hours of receipt and feed back with our insights and recommendations.
  2. Throughout the development of the strategy, and campaign inflight, we manage and attend all-agency campaign meetings/drop-ins to record and flag issues arising and compile an action log. The cadence (weekly or bi-weekly) generally depends on the length of the activity.
  3. The action log represents the live element of the service, with follow-up meetings arranged with each agency to align and resolve all issues; a record is kept up to date.
  4. Exec summary reports are socialised amongst the key stakeholders, broken out into relevant topic areas – media briefing/planning, media buying, process & reporting – to streamline and speed up issue resolution.
  5. At the conclusion of the project MediaSense present an overall post campaign report & playbook on the work undertaken and the learnings and value delivered, to ensure lessons can be carried forward into future campaigns.

Find out more

Find out more information via the Crown Commercial Service’s Communication Performance framework agreement and the MediaSense website.

Digital Capability for Health is now live

Our Digital Capability for Health framework is designed to help public health and social care organisations to meet their specific needs in developing digital solutions such as electronic referral services, care records and screening services.

Twelve suppliers, 4 of them small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), have been awarded a place on the framework. Along with their supply chain of mostly SMEs, they all have technical capabilities and vast experience in the health sector in delivering high quality services; from defining and developing digital applications to ongoing improvements of live services.

In addition to NHS Digital, other organisations like NHSX, NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) and Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) helped to evaluate  bidders’ framework applications to select the 12 best suppliers to deliver the services.

Robert McMillan, Commercial Director at NHS Digital said:

Crown Commercial Service (CCS) and NHS Digital have productively collaborated to deliver Digital Capability for Health, blending our organisations’ expertise of the digital market and specialisms in awarded large scale framework agreements. We are thrilled with the result and pleased to welcome 12 strong suppliers with leading expertise across the digital lifecycle and look forward to developing relationships with these suppliers and their supply chains to further strengthen our delivery capabilities.

The framework agreement will run for 4 years with no option to extend. 

We anticipate that health sector organisations will use this agreement for developing digital solutions to support the continuing government response to COVID-19 and EU Transition as well as help people to access public services easier and more efficiently.

Let us add power to your procurement

To find out more about our Digital Capability for Health framework (RM6221), register for our customer webinar on 17 February at 10:00am.

You can also visit the framework page for more information, or if you would like to speak to our commercial experts, please complete our online form quoting “Digital Capability for Health’ or call us on 0345 410 2222.

Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust overcome COVID-19 communication challenge using our Technology Products and Associated Services framework

The requirement

Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust provides local general hospital and community services to around 260,000 people in Walsall and the surrounding areas. This comprises Walsall Manor Hospital, a 60-site community health service including health centres and GP surgeries, and a palliative care centre. The services are delivered by 4,400 staff, and responsibility for IT falls to Craig Cox, End User Computer Service Delivery Manager and Ibrar Hashmi, Digital Technology Project Manager.

Once COVID-19 arrived, the trust asked as many staff as possible to work from home. This started in phases, with the most vulnerable being sent home first, followed by other staff on a rota basis. However, strict security measures meant that staff were not able to use any of their own devices to carry out NHS work. Walsall Healthcare realised it needed to increase and enhance its audio visual (AV) capability to help staff communicate safely and effectively.

Craig said: “Security and patient privacy is paramount and we could not risk any breaches. In addition, personal computers would not have the relevant software or necessary virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) licensing and so we urgently needed to procure software, laptops, coding stations and more.”

The solution

To help source its urgent requirements, the trust turned to our Technology Products and Associated Services (TePAS) framework. The framework offers competitive prices on products and services from a wide range of specialist suppliers.

The trust ran a further competition under lot 1, Hardware, Software and Associated Services, to find a supplier who could provide the end-to-end solution required to enable the hospital’s clinical and management teams to conduct remote meetings across disparate locations while the pandemic was ongoing.

The results

Supplier Stone Group was awarded the contract and immediately got to work liaising with the ICT Team and project managers to design a cost-effective and professional AV solution.

The supplier worked closely with the Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust team to update its IT estate to a level that is fit for today’s needs and requirements.

Ibrar said: “We believed we were working with the ideal solution for our organisation. However, once Stone started to get into the detail of what exactly it was we wanted from our AV project and took the time to understand our specific needs, it recommended something else entirely. It advised using Microsoft Teams Room solution instead of the older set up, which essentially does exactly the same thing but at a quarter of the cost.”

Stone sent the laptops to a central location at the trust where, after setting them up with the relevant emails and log in details, trust staff were called in to sign for and collect their individual kit.

Stone also recommended Iiyama screens, Yealink (UC) unified communications collaboration bar (VC-210), and Microsoft Teams, which completed the AV package to provide a simple to use yet incredibly effective solution for virtual collaboration.

Prior to having the AV solution, personnel were having to cram into a room that made it impossible to follow social distancing guidelines as this was the only way that staff could access important meetings. To address this, large format displays and high-quality speakers are being installed across a number of meeting rooms which enable staff to space out and practice social distancing when physical meetings resume. Now, they can meet safely and connect to any of their colleagues in their own trust, in the UK, or even internationally.

“The recommended AV solution is totally seamless and works brilliantly.”, said Ibrar.

Craig commented: “We were well aware of the constraints Stone were facing when it came to the supply network. However, with its support, we managed to procure 500 laptops and get 80% of our staff working from home in just over 2 and a half weeks – an amazing achievement.

“If there is a silver lining to this crisis it is that the NHS virtual clinic is here to stay. Having seen the benefits and cost savings which are critical in healthcare, the trust won’t be going back to the way things were. Patients themselves have found the process easy to use and can speak to their medical team from a smartphone or PC.

He added: “Communication has improved threefold thanks to the solution. It has made an enormous difference to the way we can all talk to each other. Having staff working safely from home helped reduce footfall on premise, minimise the impact of the virus and genuinely saved lives.”

By using Stone kit, virtual clinics offer numerous advantages to both medical staff and patients:

  • medical staff don’t have to waste time travelling from one trust site to another to meet patients, so can see more patients
  • staff now have much more flexibility to work from any trust location
  • clinic times are not constrained by having to wait for the relevant rooms to become available on the trust estate
  • staff are able to enjoy a better work life balance and this is particularly important for those with children
  • patients don’t have to travel to clinics which could be miles from where they live
  • patients don’t have to wait around for hours to see a doctor or nurse

The solution has been so successful that the trust’s initial order for 10 led to a further 20 being rolled out, and they are now looking to buy more.

Let us add power to your procurement

Our Technology Products and Associated Services framework offers you a flexible way to buy IT hardware, off-the-shelf software and associated services to suit your organisation’s technology needs.

To find out how we can help you, you can:

What you need to know about G-Cloud 12

Since its launch in 2012, over £7 billion of cloud services have been purchased using the G-Cloud framework. With 5,224 suppliers awarded a place on G-Cloud 12, over 38,000 services are available for customers to access.

This is a growth of over 25% from G-Cloud 11 – and shows that CCS has been successful in broadening the framework’s appeal.

Patrick Nolan, Technology Pillar Director at Crown Commercial Service, said:

G-Cloud continues to be a great public sector success. It encourages innovation and improves services for UK citizens, by allowing customers and suppliers to find each other easily. Now, more than ever, SMEs have a crucial role to play in our economy, and G-Cloud is a proven method through which they can grow their businesses and support the national recovery.

G-Cloud 12 went live on 28 September 2020 for an initial term of 12 months. CCS has the option to extend this by a maximum of 12 months. All services offered under G-Cloud 12 are accessed via the Digital Marketplace.

What are the main benefits?

The G-Cloud framework facilitates the purchase of commoditised, cloud-based services.

Services are off-the-shelf with many pay-as-you-go, up-to-date and innovative solutions.

Transparency is a priority as the catalogue showcases suppliers’ service information, including service definitions, pricing and suppliers’ terms and conditions.

G-Cloud is a move away from long term contracts, with a maximum duration of 24 months with the option to extend twice by up to 12 months each time (subject to approval for central government customers).

91% of the suppliers on G-Cloud 12 are SMEs, providing easy access to a range of smaller suppliers and supporting the government’s commitment to spend £1 in every £3 with small businesses.

CCS has worked to empower customers to achieve their target of 33% spend with SMEs by providing them with the information they need to make informed decisions, such as transparent pricing and accessible service definitions, and by making the application process easier, while completing ongoing assurance.

There is no OJEU, Invitation to Tender (ITT), Request for price (RFP), request for quote (RFQ), request for information (RFI) or negotiation, there are clarification questions only.

We’ve also worked to make the Digital Marketplace (DMp) more transparent and clear in terms of the services on offer, so customers can review a multitude of services, each with a documented detailed service definition, to ensure they award the best service to suit their needs.

A Framework of 3 lots

G-Cloud 12 is split into 3 Lots:

  • Lot 1: Cloud Hosting, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS)
  • Lot 2: Cloud Software, Software as a Service (SaaS)
  • Lot 3: Cloud Support, Cloud support to help set up and maintain cloud software or hosting services

How does the 6-step buying process on the Digital Marketplace work?

To procure services under G-Cloud 12 customers need to follow a simple 6 step buying process:

Step 1 Prepare – Before exploring the Digital Marketplace, it is essential for customers to understand what it is they are looking to buy. Therefore, we would recommend partnership working between procurement and technical professionals to establish high-level requirements/service outputs and timescales.

Step 2 Search and Longlist – The purpose of formulating a longlist is so that customers can refine the broad range of services available and find the service which best fits their high-level requirements within the Digital Marketplace. Use search terms which meet the Service you are looking to procure and focus your search against the relevant Lot.The Digital Marketplace can be accessed without the need to have an account.

Step 3 Developing your longlist into a shortlist – Within the Digital Marketplace all services are defined with standard filters. These filters should be applied to reduce your longlist to a shortlist of potential services which may meet a customers requirements. Examples are selecting or deselecting resellers and staff security clearance.

Step 4 Evaluation and selection – You shortlist should then be evaluated against a customer’s predefined criteria through either direct award based on lowest price or via a MEAT criteria. Each service includes a detailed service description, together with a range of documents to support the evaluation; pricing,  terms and conditions, service definition, SFIA rate card (optional)  and modern slavery statement (mandatory if the suppliers turnover is greater than £36M per annum)

Step 5 Award / buy –  Once you have evaluated and ascertained which service provision best meets your requirements, you are then in a position to award a contract. In order for you to proceed you are required to complete the G-Cloud 12 call-off agreement.

Step 6 – Benefits – it is essential that customers complete the G-Cloud Customer Benefit Record form every time that they enter into a call-off agreement

Get in touch

CCS’s team is on hand to provide support to any customers who have questions about procuring through G-Cloud and there are  monthly webinars explaining how to use the framework.

CCS has brought on board new Strategic Business Managers to help engage with the wider public sector and assist customers. This team engages with individual organisations, clusters, and umbrella bodies to build awareness of CCS’s commercial solutions, identify customer requirements and deliver expert support to enable the wider public sector to access CCS offers.

As well as investing in additional headcount, we’re helping our customers by providing resources such as framework webinars and guidance documents, providing advice through blogs, news articles and white papers, as well as regularly attending industry events.

Find out more on the Technology webpages

Calling all universities, higher and further education colleges to become a supplier on our Apprenticeship Training Dynamic Marketplace

What is the Apprenticeship Training Dynamic Marketplace?

The CCS Apprenticeship Training Dynamic Marketplace agreement enables central government, public and third sector organisations to buy apprenticeship training programmes. 

Users have access to a wide range of Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) registered apprenticeship training and end-point assessment providers who offer a variety of supplementary services including:

  • delivery of apprenticeship training and management
  • sourcing, selection and assessment, recruitment and administration of the apprentices
  • tailored apprenticeship learning to suit the specific needs of the apprentice
  • other relevant training to support the development of the apprentice

Becoming a supplier on the Apprenticeship Training Dynamic Marketplace

As well as being able to use the Apprenticeship Marketplace as a buyer to source ESFA approved apprenticeship training and/or end point assessments, universities, higher and further education colleges who offer approved apprenticeship training programmes and/or end point assessments, can register as suppliers.

You can also list your programmes and services on our Dynamic Marketplace completely free of charge.

Benefits of becoming a supplier in the Apprenticeship Training Dynamic Marketplace

For universities and further education colleges, listing your apprenticeship training programmes and end point assessments capabilities on our Apprenticeship Training Dynamic Marketplace will mean that: 

  • your services are searchable to all central government, public and third sector organisations who are registered on the Marketplace and are actively searching for solutions to support their workforce planning strategies and meet their statutory apprenticeship targets
  • increased exposure of your apprenticeship training programmes and end point assessments capabilities – meaning an opportunity for growth and increased revenue. We are also able to offer suppliers insight on the future pipeline of requirements from central government departments

How to become a supplier?

Let us help your university or college to register as a supplier so that you can supply training services to the public sector. 

Take a look at the CCS Apprenticeship Training Dynamic Marketplace supplier webinar which includes a step-by-step guide to registering as a supplier.

For further support and information please email me: katie.miller@crowncommercial.gov.uk.

Get up to speed on the latest procurement policy updates

The Cabinet Office issued a number of Procurement Policy Notes (PPNs) in December to support public sector organisations in preparing for the UK’s exit from the EU, as well as launching a consultation into the future of public procurement.

Find a Tender service

Find a Tender Service (FTS) is the new UK e-notification service where notices for new procurements must now be published. It replaces OJEU / TED.

The Cabinet Office recently introduced FTS in the first of two PPNs (08/20) – this sets out changes to procurement processes which now apply following the end of the transition period. 

If you are involved in publishing OJEUs and started a procurement before the end of the transition period, please continue to publish your subsequent notices and conclude your procurement on OJEU / TED. You must still also publish details of the contract award to Contracts Finder. 

Reserving below threshold procurements

Following the UK’s exit from the EU, contracting bodies now have more choices in relation to contract spend on goods, services and works contracts with a value below applicable thresholds:

  • Supplies & Services – £122,976
  • Works – £4,733,252

PPN 11/20 sets out new options available to contacting authorities including reserving procurements by supplier location, and reserving for SMEs or Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprises (VCSEs). Please remember that in applying the policy it is important that your organisation achieves value for money and uses good commercial judgement.

Green paper – Transforming Public Procurement

The Government has also launched a consultation on the future of public procurement in the UK.

The Government wants to speed up and simplify our procurement processes, place value for money at their heart, and unleash opportunities for small businesses, charities and social enterprises to innovate in public service delivery.

Please take your chance to engage with the consultation and help us to shape the future of public procurement in the UK.

 

Home Office finds scalable, cost-effective and efficient network infrastructure services for its estate with CCS

The requirement

The Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) function within the Home Office provides project management, architectural and engineering capability. It delivers a range of IT solutions across the department, including private wide and local area networks (fixed and wireless) and data centre services.

Whilst a significant number of its IT services are moving to centralised or cloud architectures, a comprehensive on-site local infrastructure remains to distribute these services to end users. This drives a demand for installation, maintenance and decommissioning of locally installed equipment across the Home Office estate.

The solution

To meet this demand, the DDaT team chose our Technology Services 2 framework to help it find a field services delivery partner. They wanted to achieve technical and commercial governance, and best value. The framework gave it access to a wide range of enterprise and SME suppliers so it could look for a supplier that could demonstrate its ability to meet the following requirements:

  • maintain compliance with technical standards and industry best practice
  • scalable services to meet fluctuating demand through the UK and at sites in mainland Europe
  • ability to support business as usual, incidents and project requirements spanning multiple wired and wireless networks and internal customers
  • provide 24/7 incident support to demanding service levels
  • agility, innovation and overall value for money

The results

Following a rigorous further competition, specialist infrastructure support company ITM Communications Limited was appointed.

ITM’s field services delivery team includes a full time service delivery manager, service desk, project management office, break/fix engineers, technical logistics and a flexible team of regional engineers.

ITM clearly demonstrated its ability to meet Home Office’s technical and commercial requirements, whilst also enabling it to address existing challenges. These included resource duplication, efficiency, opportunity cost and a reduction in risk, as well as offering real value for money. For example:

  • for the 6 months to November 2020, Home Office was credited approximately £8,000 on 25 jobs where standby engineers were able to complete quoted project work outside of their standby duties
  • 3 separate requests at the same site, which had been quoted at a total value of approximately £7,000, were combined and completed by a single team, saving £2,750

This approach has also reduced the environmental impact of associated travel.

John Pratt, Commercial Lead in the Home Office DDaT team, said:

Contracting with ITM through the CCS framework has allowed us to partner with a well-established supplier who has the high-level of expertise required, coupled with the ability to really understand the business needs and offer real value for money. ITM strives to find additional savings whilst on-the-job by adopting best practice and a pragmatic way of getting the job done. This is exactly what our customers need, and ITM and the framework contract allows this to be achieved across the Home Office portfolio.

Let us add power to your procurement

Our Technology Services 2 framework provides technology services from strategy and service design to the operational running of an IT estate.
To find out how we can help you make smart buying decisions for your technology services:

Fast provision of specialist vehicles supports the delivery of mobile COVID-19 testing

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) used our Vehicle Lease, Fleet Management and Flexible Rental Solutions (RM6096) commercial agreement to help in the fight against COVID-19.

The requirement

Mobile testing is playing a key role in delivering the government’s strategy to enhance testing capabilities for COVID-19 for local communities.

To achieve this goal, the DHSC required specially adapted long wheel-based vehicles which had a range of modifications, including:

  • 3 internal bulkheads
  • 1 ‘dirty area’ in the rear of the vehicle to house a wash basin, hand sanitiser and clinical waste bins, and for storage of items with a wipe/wash down lining
  • main compartment to house cool boxes for keeping completed tests between 8-22 degrees with a split charging system and robust shelving for testing supplies, cleaning products and PPE
  • traffic management system (cones and chain fencing)
  • 4 x robust gazebos
  • 4 sets of tables and chairs
  • PPE and first aid boxes
  • various equipment to run mobile testing facility

Because of the urgent need for the vehicles, the timeline from confirming the required specification to delivery was only 10 days but with an expectation of some vehicles being made available and fully operational within 6 days.

The solution 

The DHSC had previously sourced vehicles and suppliers independently. However, on this occasion, they used our Fleet agreement to ensure the contracts which were awarded met the highest levels of probity and value for money, even during these challenging times.

An order was placed with Enterprise 10 days before the desired delivery date for all vehicles, with some ideally needed within 6 days.

Enterprise created a small project team to ensure we could source the vehicles and suppliers capable of managing the conversion to the required standards and timeframes. The team was also tasked with acquiring the large volume of specific loose items needed from a large pool of varied suppliers across the UK. 

This challenge would have been difficult in normal circumstances but during a pandemic, when many suppliers were closed or on reduced capacity and with many resources scarce, it became a major project for a team having to work remotely from each other. 

The results 

  • 7 vehicles were ready for delivery on day 6, 8 were ready on day 7, and 5 were complete just 8 days after the initial order was received
  • by leveraging our existing agreements and supplier relationships, we delivered against a demanding specification and timescale, the success of which was reflected through the delivery of a further 120 vehicles by Enterprise before the end of the month

This illustrates the nimbleness that Lot 4 of RM6096 can offer the UK public sector. The contract-free, flexible rental solution provides fleet operators with total flexibility over the vehicle type, duration, and specification of their requirement.

As we emerge from lockdown with the future still uncertain, we believe flexible rental, through should play an increasingly important role in fleet decision making within the public sector.

Further information 

We offer a end-to-end suite of Fleet solutions to give the public sector the power to keep their vehicles on the road in a safe, cost-effective and sustainable manner. To learn more:

Parcel lockers provide creative solutions across the public sector

With the public sector continually asked to deliver an ever greater service with increasing finite resources, there has been a rise in the use of creative solutions to address traditional problems.

Nowhere has this been seen more than in the use of smart parcel lockers, available through our Postal Goods, Services and Solutions (RM6017) framework. 

In this article, we review how 2 public sector organisations – a hospital and a university – used parcel lockers to solve very different problems while increasing efficiency.

The hospital

Only when a patient receives their medication can they be safely discharged from hospital – freeing up their bed. This often means waiting for the medication to be ready to leave the pharmacy, followed by a further wait while the medication is delivered to the wards. 

A Care Quality Commission report found that nearly 75% of patients whose discharge from hospital was delayed was because they had to wait for medicine. Just over a quarter of these patients had to wait over 4 hours. 

The knock-on effect from this can be felt at the other end of the hospital in A&E, where patients often have to wait for hours until a bed becomes available and they can be moved to a ward.

To help solve this problem, a hospital purchased a number of smart parcel lockers. They are safe, secure, and contactless. They can operate 24/7 and are capable of capturing images of access and providing an audit trail. 

The arrival of the lockers at the hospital meant that patients could vacate their bed – either going home or waiting elsewhere onsite – before being alerted by email that their medication was ready to collect.

The message contained a QR code, enabling contactless collection, and a PIN code – the recipient can choose which to use to collect their medication.

This innovative solution had a transformative effect on both patients and the hospital:

  • patients waiting in A&E could progress through the hospital at a greater pace
  • a far better, more comfortable experience for patients and their families
  • other areas of the hospital benefited – such as car park capacity

The university

Northampton University houses over 2,500 students on its campus. The students generate a perpetual flow of parcel deliveries from online retailers and relatives.

Traditionally, the University, like many others, would leave a note under the student’s door when there was a parcel to collect from the mailroom. 

This was a time-consuming and inefficient process for the university and frustrating for students whose access to parcels was often restricted by the mailroom’s opening hours.

With the university keen to use staff time more efficiently while improving the student experience, they purchased a number of smart parcel lockers from Quadient, a supplier on our Postal Goods Services and Solutions commercial agreement.

When their parcel is available to collect, students are alerted via an email or text message. To collect the parcel, they simply have to scan a barcode or enter the PIN code included in their alert, to open the door and access their goods.

The solution provided the University with:

  • a secure, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliant parcel storage system
  • the ability to offer contactless parcel collection – especially important during COVID-19 
  • the chance to become more efficient – with staff able to focus on other priorities

Get involved

Parcel lockers can be used by any organisation that has a need for secure storage while looking to increase organisational efficiency. 

For more information on this agreement and to learn how we can help you take some of the pressure off with a range of smart solutions: