Public procurement notice: Contract Award Notice
Published: 2025-05-13
Buyer: Department of Further and Higher Education Research Innovation and Science
Country: IE
Region: IE061
Contract type: Services
Procedure: Open procedure
CPV classification: 71241000 | 71621000 | 72224000: Project management consultancy services | 73000000 | 73200000
Estimated value: 200000 EUR
Submission deadline: 2026-03-18
Award criteria: price

Technical requirements: A Public Service Apprenticeship Advisor to further progress the commitment set out in the ‘Action Plan for Apprenticeship 2021-2025’ to grow the number of apprenticeship registrations across the public service, including local authorities, to reach 750 annual registrations by 2025. The successful tenderer will be expected to be the central point of contact offering co-ordination and advisory services to public service bodies and connect them to the servcies needed to establish an apprenticeship in their organisation. Tenderers are required to provide reports and develop key metrics which will act as indicators of progress to relevant stakeholders including this Department, public sector organisations, the civil service, and education providers.
No.	AWARD CRITERIA	Marks Available	MQT	Page Limit
1.	Quality of Approach and Methodology to Service Delivery
	125 Marks	
75	
2
2.	Contract Management
	125 Marks	
75	
2
3.	The Public Service Apprenticeship Advisor
	300 Marks	
180	
2
4.	Sustainable Contract Delivery	50 Marks	-	2
5.	Price	400 Marks	
N/A	
N/A
TOTAL	1000		

Weightings	Meanings
91% to 100%	Excellent response providing comprehensive and convincing assurance that the Tenderer will deliver to an excellent standard.
80% to 90%	A very good response which demonstrates real understanding and assurance that the Tenderer will deliver to a good or high standard. 
60% to 79%	A satisfactory response which demonstrates a reasonable understanding of requirements and gives reasonable assurance of delivery to an adequate standard, but does not provide sufficiently convincing assurance to award a higher mark.
30% to 59%	A response where reservations exist. Lacks full credibility/convincing detail, and there is a risk that delivery will not be successful.
1% to 29%	A response where serious reservations exist. This may be because, for example, insufficient detail is provided, or the response has fundamental flaws, or is seriously inadequate or seriously lacks credibility with a high risk delivery will be unsuccessful.
0%	No Response or response completely fails to address the criterion under consideration.



Tenderers must score the Minimum Qualifying Threshold “MQT”, allocated to all non-cost criteria (Criteria 1, 2 and 3) in the CFT in order to come under consideration for awarding of the contract.  Failure to achieve the MQT in any of these non-cost criteria will result in the Tenderer being eliminated from the competition and not being scored for Criterion 4 - Price.

Where a specified page limit has been exceeded the Client may elect, at its sole discretion, not to give any consideration to that element of the tender exceeding the specified page limit.

Price: 

The lowest priced Tender shall be awarded the maximum points available under this criterion and the points of all other Tenders under this criterion shall be calculated using the following formula.

Cost Score	=	Lowest Tendered Rate	x	Maximum Number of Marks Available
		Tendered Rate under evaluation		

Tie Break: 

Where the evaluation results in a tie between two or more tenders, then the following process will be followed to determine the ranking and the successful tender:

The tender with the highest overall ‘Qualitative’ score (total of marks awarded under Criteria 1-4) shall be deemed the Most Economically Advantageous Tender.


Winner: Department of Further and Higher Education Research Innovation and Science
Award value: 200000
Number of bids: 3