Public procurement notice: Design Contest
Published: 2023-01-30
Buyer: Sligo County Council
Country: IE
Contract type: Services
Procedure: Open procedure
CPV classification: 71200000 | 71210000 | 71220000 | 71221000 | 71222000
Submission deadline: 2023-03-24
Award criteria: Other

Technical requirements: This competition is administered by The Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland [RIAI] on behalf of Sligo County Council.
Registration for the Competition is free of charge. The full Competition Brief for each site including Appendices (reports, drawings, site photographs, and regulations) is available from the RIAI website. All entrants have to complete the online Registration form on the RIAI website, which will generate a unique code for the entrant.
https://www.riai.ie/whats-on/competitions/town-centre-living-an-riai-and-dhlgh-housing-competition-for-castleblaney-kildare-roscrea-sligo
In the Housing for All policy document the Government committed to promote a ‘Town Centre First’ approach to development in towns. This seeks to align policies and improve resources to deliver the best outcomes for our towns and villages. The Town Centre First policy was launched in Moate, Co Westmeath on 4 February 2022, with a central aim to create town centres that function as viable, vibrant and attractive locations for people to live, work and for leisure. The policy promotes increased residential use in our rural towns and villages, consistent with the objectives of the National Planning Framework. Town centre living close to existing infrastructure and services also aligns closely with the objectives of the Government’s Climate Action Plan.
Aligned with these ambitions, these Town Centre Living competitions seek to encourage innovative design solutions for social housing within town centres by way of delivering built examples as to how the objectives of the Housing For All and Town Centre First policies can be met.  Following an open invitation to, and close liaison with Local Authorities, the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage (DHLGH) has selected four town centre sites in Castleblayney Co. Monaghan, Kildare, Co. Kildare, Roscrea Co. Tipperary, and Sligo, Co. Sligo.
On behalf of the DHLGH, and Local Authorities, the RIAI is running four separate competitions for these towns concurrently. It is intended that the winning practices will be awarded the design commission and that the selected sites would be progressed as real social housing projects by the various local authorities, (or by an Approved Housing Body on behalf of the local authority) who will appoint the winning design team, to progress through the pre-construction process to construction and delivery, funded by DHLGH.  Further details regarding competition entry are set out in the following sections.
The competition is intended to generate design innovation in town centre housing and in order to promote diversity in the response and award of contacts, each entrant (i.e. Architect/Practice) may submit entries for a maximum of any two of the four competition sites.  No more than two contracts will be awarded to an architect and/or practice as an outcome of the competition.
This notice relates to the design competition for development of social housing at a site at Pirn Mill Road, Sligo.