Public procurement notice: Voluntary Ex Ante Transparency Notice
Published: 2017-11-11
Buyer: Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council
Country: UK
Contract type: Services
Procedure: Negotiated without a prior call for competition
CPV classification: 72253200: Computer systems support services | 72268000: Software supply services
Estimated value: 230000 GBP
Award criteria: Lowest price

Technical requirements: The Servelec Synergy Education Suite is one of the Council's core corporate business systems which utilises the Client and Web applications to deliver their services efficiently and effectively to children and their families in Solihull and enables SMBC to deliver against statutory requirements. This contract is mainly to extend support and maintenance of the current Servelec Synergy Education System which has already been implemented in SMBC.
Directive 2014/24/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council . Article 32 — Negotiated procedure without prior publication
(b) for additional deliveries by the original supplier which are intended either as a partial replacement of supplies or installations or as the extension of existing supplies or installations where a change of supplier would oblige the contracting authority to acquire supplies having different technical characteristics which would result in incompatibility or disproportionate technical difficulties in operation and maintenance; the duration of such contracts as well as that of recurrent contracts shall not, as a general rule, exceed 3 years.
Contract value provided is for support and maintenance. Full contract value could be up to 480 000 GBP, to cover any potential additional software modules that may be required over the contract period e.g. to ensure statutory obligations are fulfilled, and the support and maintenance thereof.
Solihull Council has already made a large capital investment in the Servelec Synergy Education Suite (formerly supplied by Tribal) which has been used by Solihull MBC for a number of years. Servelec Synergy is the only organisation that can provide the support and maintenance services for this system. Services constitute the majority of the contract. As per article 32 of Directive 2014/24/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council, a change of supplier would oblige the contracting authority to acquire supplies having different technical characteristics which would result in incompatibility or disproportionate technical difficulties in operation and maintenance.
The contract value range includes scope for any potential new software modules which may be required over three year period e.g. to ensure SMBC meets its statutory requirements, and the implementation of that software, which is justified as ‘additional deliveries by the original supplier which are intended either as a partial replacement of supplies or installations or as the extension of existing supplies or installations’. This procedure is justified by the prohibitive costs of changing to another supplier which would require disproportionate capital investment, disproportionate implementation and training costs and resources, and that the existing software is still in its useful life period and does not need to be changed.


Winner: Servelec Synergy Limited
Award value: 230000