Public procurement notice: Contract Notice
Published: 2017-12-19
Buyer: Scottish Government
Country: UK
Contract type: Services
Procedure: Competitive dialogue
CPV classification: 32000000 | 32412100 | 45232300 | 64200000
Estimated value: 600000000 GBP
Submission deadline: 2018-01-18
Award criteria: The most economic tender

Technical requirements: The contracts for each Lot are gap funded interventions to deliver access to Next Generation Access Broadband Infrastructure (capable of delivering speeds of at least 30 Mbps “NGA") to as many premises in Scotland as possible by the end of 2021. They build on the deployment of NGA Broadband Infrastructure that has been, and will be, realised through the 2 Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband programmes (Highlands and Island and the Rest of Scotland), together with commercial deployment. Following these deployments there are around 178 948 premises eligible for intervention (“white premises”) which are in scope across these contacts. We have split these white premises into 3 geographical.
The split of white premises between these Lots and other additional information about the requirement can be found at II.2 and VI.3.
There is no provision for a “superlot” i.e. bidding for an aggregation of all 3 Lots on different terms than the sum of the parts. However in the interests of efficiency, if a Bidder is awarded a contract for more than 1 Lot, Scottish Government reserves the right to combine those applicable Lots into one contract.
This contract is a gap funded intervention to deliver access to NGA Broadband Infrastructure to as many premises in the relevant geographical area of Scotland (the “North Area”) as possible by the end of 2021. The North Area is broadly the Highlands and Islands, Angus, Aberdeen and Dundee (more particularly described and shown coloured green on the plan forming Annex 1 of the Initial Descriptive Document) and comprises approximately 99 288 White Premises.
The invitation to participate in dialogue will contain a minimum requirement that some white premises must be served at gigabit speed by the bidder’s solution in each of a short list of named locations or areas in the more remote parts of the north lot. This will likely be expressed as a requirement that at least a specified percentage of white premises within an area (e.g. a postcode) are served as part of the Bidder's solution. It is expected that the list of required areas will contain between 5 and 10 places.
Owing to character limitations not all criteria and info relating to this procurement can be included in this notice. The objective and non-discriminatory criteria are set out in full in the document entitled “ESPD Instructions” which can be accessed through the website referenced in Section I.3. The ESPD selection process will be carried out in 3 stages.
During this first stage of the selection, the selection team will determine on a pass/fail basis whether:
— any of the Lead Bidder, Consortium Members and/or Reliance Entities (if any) are in breach of the mandatory grounds for exclusion or, in the case of the discretionary exclusion grounds, are considered ineligible at the discretion of the Scottish Ministers, in accordance with Part III of the ESPD and Regulation 58 of the Regulations.
During this second stage of the selection, the selection team will determine on a pass/fail basis whether the Bidder:
— meets the requisite economic and financial standing selection criteria deemed appropriate for the project set out in Section 3 of the document entitled “ESPD Instructions”, and
— meets the technical and professional ability selection criteria set out in section 3 of the document entitled “ESPD Instructions”.
Bidders who pass all the Stage 1: Exclusion Grounds and meet the Stage Two: Selection Criteria — Minimum Requirements will then have their ESPD Response scored in accordance with the Down Selection Criteria. The Down Selection Criteria are set out in Section 3 of the document entitled “ESPD Instructions”. The Down Selection Criteria will be applied to all Bidders that pass Stage 1 and Stage 2 to reduce the number of Bidders that are invited to participate in dialogue using Part V (Reduction of the number of qualified candidates) of the ESPD. For the avoidance of doubt there is no need for bidders to provide any additional information for Question 5.1 to enable down-selection. It is the Scottish Ministers' intention that the 4 Bidders achieving the highest scores will be invited to participate in dialogue. In the event of a tie for fourth shortlisted place, the Bidder with the highest score for Case Study 1 (Next Generation Access) out of the Bidders in the tie, will be invited to Dialogue.
Economic operators may be excluded from this competition if they are in any of the situations referred to in Regulation 58 of the Public Contracts (Scotland) Regulations 2015. It is a condition of participation in the dialogue process that Bidders sign the “Code of Conduct” or provide a statement as described at point 1.3 in document entitled “ESPD Instructions”.
This contract is a gap funded intervention to deliver access to NGA Broadband Infrastructure (capable of delivering speeds of at least 30 Mbps) to as many premises in the relevant geographical area of Scotland (the “Central Area”) as possible by the end of 2021. The Central Area is broadly central Scotland and Fife (more particularly described and shown coloured amber on the plan forming Annex 1 of the Initial Descriptive Document) and comprises approximately 53 570 White Premises.
Owing to character limitations not all criteria and info relating to this procurement can be included in this notice. The Objective and Non-Discriminatory Criteria are set out in full in the document entitled “ESPD Instructions” which can be accessed through the website referenced in Section I.3. The ESPD selection process will be carried out in 3 stages.

Eligibility requirements: Section A: Suitability in Part IV of ESPD not used.

Award value: 600000000