Public procurement notice: Contract Award Notice
Published: 2020-11-27
Buyer: Department of Health and Social Care
Country: UK
Contract type: Services
Procedure: Negotiated without a prior call for competition
CPV classification: 63521000
Estimated value: 473390310 GBP
Award criteria: Lowest price

Technical requirements: The Provision of Freight Services for the Supply of Personal Protective Equipment and Medical Equipment
The provision of freight services for the supply of personal protective equipment and medical equipment.
1) The consequences of not responding rapidly to the pandemic to meet the exceptional increases in demand for PPE to protect care providers and key workers, and medical products to treat patients, would be significant excess illness and deaths in the UK.
2) Huge increases in global demand, export restrictions from various nation states all contributed to a global shortage of product availability.
3) Where PPE and other critical product relating to the Covid-19 response was being sourced globally (in particular from south east Asia), there was an urgent need to procure international freight services to support the movement of these products by various modes, including sea, rail, air and road. It was also important to move product quickly from point of production to prevent it being sold to higher bidders.
4) This was an exceptional requirement of the Covid-19 response, which was not foreseen in the context of normal procurement and sourcing practice.
5) The international freight services required included ground transport and handling, customs brokerage, transit warehousing, freight sortation and palletisation, air, sea and rail freight charters, and product quality assurance.
6) Capability and capacity to deliver these services did not exist, and there was an urgent need to engage an international freight and logistics partner with these capabilities and the available capacity in the appropriate geographic locations to support the rapidly escalating demands.
7) No pre-existing government commercial agreements were identified which covered the nature and scale of the services required and that could be mobilised in the necessary timescales.
8) The DHSC had to work at pace to setup an international freight and logistics service capable of handling the volume of product being sourced from Asia and other parts of the world to ensure that a wide range of health and social care providers had access to PPE to protect staff and people in their care, helping to prevent infection and deaths.
9) Uniserve Ltd are a specialist international freight and logistics services provider with a global operational presence capable of supporting the diverse requirements of the DHSC, particularly in Asia from where the majority of product needed to be moved.
10) Uniserve Ltd were selected to provide services as they had the technical capability and operational capacity to meet the varied service requirements of the DHSC and to be able to meet the very short mobilisation timescales.
11) This contract was awarded to Uniserve Ltd to meet a specific urgent need to move PPE from Asia to the UK to support supply to health and social care providers.
12) The services provided by Uniserve Ltd provide an essential element of the PPE supply chain arrangements put in place to support the Covid-19 response, and will be required through the highest risk winter period.


Winner: Uniserve
Award value: 473390310
Number of bids: 1