Public procurement notice: Contract Notice
Published: 2017-06-08
Buyer: Cheshire East Borough Council
Country: UK
Region: Cheshire
Contract type: Services
Procedure: Open procedure
CPV classification: 72400000 | 72410000: Provider services
Estimated value: 10080000 GBP
Submission deadline: 2017-08-25
Award criteria: The most economic tender
EU fund: ERDF

Technical requirements: Cheshire East Borough Council, on behalf of the Connecting Cheshire Partnership including, Cheshire West and Chester and Warrington Borough Councils, intends to procure a supplier or consortium to extend the availability of Next Generation Access (NGA) broadband infrastructure. The procurement aims to provide coverage to a set of nominated premises (both businesses and residential) across the region where there is currently no provision of broadband with speeds greater than 30 Mbps, described as Not Spot areas.
As a technology agnostic deployment, the project will support investment in the most cost effective and sustainable solutions available, providing open access wholesale broadband services. There will be an emphasis on connecting businesses and homes in our most rural and remote areas.
Following engagement with the telecommunications market, an Intervention Area of 28,717 NGA white premises has been identified. The priority is to ensure that the public funding is used most effectively to provide a step change in performance for those businesses and residential premises that currently have speeds of less than 24Mbps. Currently 18,449 have been identified in this category and are in scope of this procurement, and we will look to prioritise premises in more rural locations of sub-region. The funding for this project is considered as State aid and its use in this procurement will be approved by Broadband Delivery UK's National Competence Centre under the 2016 National Broadband Scheme for the UK (2016 NBS), a European Commission approved aid Scheme. The intention is to use a gap funding model, where the assets remain in perpetuity with the private sector, mitigating public sector risk and ensuring full integration with existing NGA networks.
The Contract(s) awarded may be renewed in the event that the Authority requires an extension of the NGA deployed services whereby NGA coverage targets for the project have not been met in full. 5 000 000 GBP of the total procurement value may be awarded to support an extension of NGA deployed services, to be managed through the Contract Change Control Procedure.
All bidders must comply with the ‘Use of Existing Infrastructure Code of Conduct’ (Appendix 4) as available via https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/bduk-new-procurement-pipeline
This procurement process will be undertaken via CEC's electronic Contract &Tender Management System, www.the-chest.org.uk. For organisations to be considered for the contract, they must register an expression of interest & provide the required information via this portal. For technical problems, please Email:ProcontractSuppliers@proactis.com telephone: +44 330 005 0352. The Council gives no guarantee or warranty or makes any representation as to the accuracy of any indicative volumes/work.
Cheshire East Borough Council will incorporate a standstill period at the point information on the award of the contract is communicated to tenderers. That notification will provide full information on the award decision. The standstill period, which will be for a minimum of 10 calendar days, provides time for unsuccessful tenderers to challenge the award decision before the contract is entered into. The Public Contracts Regulations 2015 (SI No 102) provides for aggrieved parties who have been harmed or are at risk of harm by a breach of the rules to take action in the High Court (England, Wales and Northern Ireland).

Eligibility requirements: Code of Conduct All bidders must comply with the ‘Use of Existing Infrastructure Code of Conduct’ (Appendix 4) as available via https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/bduk-new-procurement-pipeline and expression of interest (Appendix 5) To be completed and returned by 4.7.2017.

Award value: 10080000