Public procurement notice: Prior Information Notice Without Call For Competition
Published: 2016-01-26
Buyer: Hertfordshire County Council
Country: UK
Contract type: Services
CPV classification: 34000000 | 34100000 | 34110000: Passenger cars | 34120000: Motor vehicles for transport of persons | 60000000

Technical requirements: Pre-Procurement Market Engagement for the provision of Self Drive Hire and Passenger Carrying Vehicles with Driver.
The Council and its customers have a requirement for the provision of self-drive hire vehicles to include cars and commercials and in addition passenger carrying vehicles with driver.
It is anticipated that any future procurement will be broken down into the following Vehicle Lots as listed below:
— Lot 2: Goods Vehicles — small vans and up to 3.5 tonne with variety of body styles including variety of box styles with or without tail-lift and lorries 7.5 tonnes and over;
The existing framework expires at the end of September 2016 and this requirement is to renew and re procure this framework. The current self-drive hire framework has been well supported and provided competitive vehicle hire for the Council and its customers. We have a number of key users of the current framework which includes Academy's, Schools, Northamptonshire County Council, Youth Connexions and Herts Catering.
The current service enables reliable continuity of the Council and its customer's everyday services and business at best value. The growth of our customer base with the current framework outweighed our expectations and we will be marketing the possibility of the new framework with districts and other potential customers. This framework is also heavily relied on for transporting pupils on trips and activities also used by departments when their own vehicles are off the road or being serviced. It is anticipated that the Council will procure a multi supplier framework moving forwards to enable full coverage across the country.
This brief is being used as an outline to engage with the market so the Council can discuss the opportunity with potentially interested organisations.
It's anticipated that the selected supplier(s) would be required to work collaboratively with the Council to continually support the service to ensure it is reliable, cost effective and meets the needs of our service users and customers.
The intention is to procure a framework for a fixed term of three years with the option to extend for a further year at the sole discretion of the Council. The anticipated total value of the framework is ranged between 666 000 GBP to 1 100 000 GBP.
— Submission of the Supplier Questionnaire (please see Appendix A — separate MS Word document) Supplier Questionnaire's must be received by 12.2.2016.
For the avoidance of doubt, this stage of the project is not part of a formal procurement process and the Council is not committing, at this stage to carrying out such a process.
Participation or non-participation in this pre-procurement market engagement shall not prevent any supplier participating in a potential procurement process nor is it intended that any information supplied shall place any supplier at an advantage in any forthcoming procurement process.
The Council's eTendering system, In-Tend, enables questions and answers to be exchanged via the email facility.
Any queries regarding this process must be submitted via the In-Tend system by the deadline stated in section 6.7) above. Although the source of any questions will be kept confidential, both the query itself and the Council's response may be shared with the other interested parties at its sole discretion.
The Council will seek to respond within 3 working days via the In-Tend system but gives no guarantee that it will respond at all.