Public procurement notice: Prior Information Notice Without Call For Competition
Published: 2019-07-16
Buyer: Department for Education
Country: UK
Contract type: Services
CPV classification: 85300000
Estimated value: 3500000 GBP

Technical requirements: The National Assessment and Accreditation System (NAAS) for Child and Families Social Workers forms a vital part of wider reforms to encourage child and family social workers and practice supervisors to develop and demonstrate their knowledge and skills against national standards.
We wish to procure a delivery supplier to deliver all that we need in phase 2 of the programme, between September 2019 and March 2020, with potential for extension until September 2020.
The demand from the sector to join as early adopters means the project is now very different to how it looked 2 years ago, when the last procurement was carried out.
This procurement exercise is to ensure that the successful delivery of NAAS to date is built on, and a delivery partner is in place to deliver all that we need in phase 2 between September 2019 and March 2020.
—— operational delivery of NAAS assessment centres, which includes delivery of practice simulation with actors,
—— delivery of a minimum of 800 high quality assessments to a maximum of 1 950 high quality assessments between September 2019 and March 2020,
To ensure the continued delivery of assessment centres, 65 centres have been booked for the period September 2019-December 2019, using additional funding outside of this contract to pay for; venues, staff (a centre manager, assessment facilitators, assessors and actors) and logistical arrangements for the IT equipment to be delivered to the centres by courier. Information about these booked assessment centres will be handed over to the successful supplier as part of the implementation period.
On commencement of this contract, the supplier will be expected to deliver associated management and quality assurance of those booked assessment centres, and immediately commence booking and operational delivery of assessment centres for the period of January-March 2020.
The competition will commence on 19 July and the contract will be for 6 months, with 2 options to extend for a further 3 months (6 months + 3 months + 3 months). The Department wishes to assess market capability and capacity to administer and deliver a response for this service.
There will be a pre-market engagement event on 30 July from 11-1 at the Department for Education, Sanctuary Buildings, Great Smith Street, London, SW1P 3BT. Please register an interest in attending, max 2 per organisation, to email: SWR.programme@education.gov.uk by 12:00 noon 24 July.
At every stage of delivery, we have put the social worker experience first and we have worked with the early adopters on a number of improvements such as more detailed results feedback, the online platform and choice of assessment venues. At the end of June over 490 social workers have been assessed and there are more than 100 booked to take the assessment over the summer.
This notice does not constitute a call for competition to procure any services for the Department. The procurement of any services will be carried out in accordance with the provisions of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015. The purpose of this PIN is to stimulate early market interest and invite interested parties to take part in preliminary market consultations.


Award value: 3500000