Public procurement notice: Contract Award Notice
Published: 2017-04-22
Buyer: The Minister for the Cabinet Office acting through Crown Commercial Service
Country: UK
Region: UNITED KINGDOM
Contract type: Services
Procedure: Open procedure
CPV classification: 72590000
Estimated value: 110000000 
Award criteria: Quality

Technical requirements: Quality
Crown Commercial Service as the Contracting Authority has put in place a Pan Government Collaborative Framework Agreement for use by UK public sector bodies (and any future successors to these organisations), which include Central Government Departments and their Arm's Length Bodies and Agencies, Non Departmental Public Bodies, NHS bodies and Local Authorities.
— QA & Test Delivery Ownership: responsibility for, and coordination of, all aspects of QA and Test across the business, programme and or project. Includes making QA and test rules, planning; choice of tools; and team leader.
— QA & Test Analysis: analysis, design and execution: covering a variety of test activities, test types and methods. For example, compatibility testing, accessibility testing, functional testing (including exploratory techniques).
— Test Engineering: developing and delivering test automation outlines and services. Typically working as part of a DevOps capability within an Agile development environment. Increasingly, QA & Test specialists are part of and co-located with the development and scrum teams.
— Non-Functional Testing: design and execution of tests to cover non-functional needs, including load & performance and operational acceptance.
— Integration testing: covering the strategy, planning and execution for complex, large scale technical integration testing.
— Assurance: to understand and mitigate risk during third party-led test activities, typically when working in waterfall delivery cycles or legacy contractual environments.
— Consultancy: to provide technical reviews at project, programme or departmental/business unit level to form best QA & Test practices.
Crown Commercial Service reserves the right for an electronic auction to be held by Public Sector bodies during further competition among the parties to the Framework Agreement(s).
Framework term: The duration of the Framework Agreement is a maximum of 3 years, with the first term being 2 years, with a further possible multiple extensions up to a maximum of 3 years in total.
Suppliers should note that, in accordance with the UK Government's policies on transparency, Crown Commercial Service intends to publish the text of any Framework Agreement awarded, subject to possible redactions at the discretion of Crown Commercial Service. The terms of the proposed Framework Agreement will also permit a public sector contracting authority, awarding a contract under this Framework Agreement, to publish the text of that contract, subject to possible redactions at the discretion of the contracting authority. Further information on transparency can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/procurement-and-contracting-transparency-requirementsguidance
The Contracting Authority has awarded a place on this Framework Agreement to the successful suppliers, however this does not mean that there is any guarantee of subsequent contracts being awarded. Any expenditure, work or effort undertaken prior to contract award under this Framework Agreement is a matter solely for the commercial judgement of the successful suppliers. Any orders placed under this Framework Agreement will form a separate contract under the scope of this Framework between the supplier and the specific requesting other contracting body. The Contracting Authority and other contracting bodies utilising the Framework reserve the right to use any electronic portal during the life of the agreement.
The following information has been captured in accordance with the requirements of Regulation 59 of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015.
The Authority received a total of 50 tenders in response to this procurement, all of which were received electronically via the Authority's eSourcing Suite.


Number of bids: 43