Supporting high-value commissioning

We were engaged by the Department for Education (DfE) to support the procurement process for the £300m ‘institutes of technology’ programme – which invested in capital facilities and collaboration between education and employers to boost higher level technical skills.

To robustly and fairly assess the quality of proposals submitted to DfE, we:

• Worked with DfE colleagues to help them finalise the invitation to tender and other guidance documents for prospective bidders – ensuring that documentation was compliant, clear, and would foster the innovation which Government was seeking through the programme.
• Worked with DfE colleagues to prepare detailed guidance for colleagues involved in the appraisal process – making sure that colleagues had a clear, shared, view of the purpose of the process, what was being sought through it, and how they should assess proposals.
• Project managed each of two substantive stages in the procurement process, ensuring that all proposals were received, processed, and appraised in a compliant, secure, and efficient manner – consistent with both the process we had defined, and wider best practice.
• Conducted two independent appraisals of each proposal submitted in the first stage of the procurement, then moderated the scoring panel’s assessment and scores to produce a consolidated, balanced, and evidenced appraisal of each proposal.
• Supported DfE colleagues’ overall decision-making at the first stage in the procurement, where they set our qualitative assessment alongside specialist legal and financial assessments to form an overall scoring and take decisions. 
• Conducted two independent appraisals of each proposal which was progressed to the second stage of the procurement, then moderated the panel’s assessment and scores to produce a consolidated, balanced, and evidenced appraisal of each proposal.
• Prepared a detailed, evidenced, summary of our assessment of each proposal, in a form that could be used both to support DfE’s consideration of its investment options and, to provide actionable feedback to bidders – both successful, and unsuccessful. 
• Supported DfE colleagues’ final decision-making – providing advice, support and challenge to senior colleagues as they prepared their recommendations to Ministers based on our scoring and their own, wider consideration of the programme’s priorities.