Public procurement notice: Modification Of A Contract/Concession During Its Term
Published: 2023-11-17
Buyer: Residential Tenancies Board (RTB)
Country: IE
Contract type: Services
CPV classification: 72512000: Document management services | 75112000 | 79512000 | 79999100

Technical requirements: The Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) undertook a project to outsource its requirements for data management and contact centre services. The intention was to provide an efficient, timely and customer centred services for the processing of registration and dispute applications, payment of associated fees and the interface with its customers to handle daily contact. The project required a number of services which were divided into three lots: Lot 1: Document Management Services; Lot 2: Contact Centre; and Lot 3: Scanning Services.
The contract was awarded for an initial period of three years, commencing 9 May 2013, with the option to extend for an additional two years which was exercised by the contracting authority. The value of the contract over the initial three-year period was EUR 2,803, 349 (excluding VAT). The value over the full five-year period was EUR 5 million (ex VAT).
The contract was extended on the same terms and conditions for twelve months from 9 May 2018 with an estimated value of €1.8 million (ex VAT).
The contract was further extended for a period of eighteen months from 20 May 2019 to 9 November 2020 with an estimated value of EUR 3.5 million (ex VAT). A new right to terminate for both parties on giving three months' notice was introduced, and an annual increase of 2.5% to the charges payable, to cater for inflationary increases, was agreed.
In May 2020, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, further changes to the contract were implemented. These included changes to the scope of the services, a reduction in the overall volume of services, a change to the primary place of performance of the services (to allow for home-working), a reduction in the number of staff working on the contract, reduced hours of operation, changes to the data processing agreement and changes to SLAs/KPIs. A new commercial model (moving from a transaction-based charging model to a PTE model) was also implemented.
The contract was extended in November 2020 for twelve months at an estimated value of EUR 2 million (ex VAT). The contract was subsequently extended to ensure continuity of essential services from 10 November 2021 for twelve months; from 1 November 2022 for six months; and again from 10 April 2023 for a period of five months to 11 September 2023.
The contract term indicated at II.2.7 (124 months) relates to the term of the contract to date, including all of the above extensions.
In May 2013, the RTB entered into a contract with Southwestern Business Process Services Limited (now Capita Customer Solutions Limited) for the provision of document management and contact centre services. The contract is for business-critical services and was awarded for an initial period of three years with the option to extend for a further two years. This option was exercised by the RTB. The contract has since been further extended and modified on a number of occasions (as described at Section VI.3 of this notice) and was due to expire in September 2023.
The RTB has, since 2020, implemented a new tenancy management system, known as RTB360. The RTB360 is an enterprise solution supporting all core business processes, information flows, reporting, and data analytics requirements of the RTB. In 2020, the RTB advertised a single-party framework agreement relating to the provision of contact centre and document management services (Ref 2020/S 069-164518). The intention was that the initial call-off contract awarded under this framework agreement would replace the current contract with Capita.
The competition for the framework agreement was predicated on the assumption that RTB360 would be in place and fully operational at contract commencement. Due to the impact of Covid-19 and the significant delays in implementing RTB360, the RTB was forced to abandon the competition in April 2021.
In November 2021, the system went live, followed by the introduction of Annual Registrations in April 2022. The RTB has now completed Release 3.0 of RTB360 and implemented various technical incremental improvements to its online registration system to better support landlords and agents with a view to improving user experience. The RTB is using all resources available to it to re-tender for the services and aims to publish a pre-qualification questionnaire within the next four months. The contract with Capital Customer Solutions Limited is for business critical services. In such circumstances, the RTB is not in a position to change the service provider and must, therefore, extend the contract with the current service provider for the interim period. The alternative would result in the RTB facing substantial disruption due the high demand of crucial services and support currently being provided by the service provider. This would have a substantial and detrimental effect on the RTB’s ability to deliver its services.
The modification extends the contract for a further period of approximately 5 months and 18 days from 12 September 2023 to 29 February 2024. The value of the extension is estimated to be €2.5 million (ex VAT). The figure of €2.5 million as set out at VII.1.6 is the estimated value of the extension commencing on 12 September 2023. The value of the modifications does not exceed 50% of the value of the original contract.
The term of the contract is being extended for an additional 5 months and 18 days, from 12 September 2023 to 29 February 2024.
The RTB is using all resources available to it to re-tender for the services and aims to publish a pre-qualification questionnaire in early 2024. The contract with Capital Customer Solutions Limited is for business critical services. In such circumstances, the RTB is not in a position to change the service provider and must, therefore, extend the contract with the current service provider for the interim period. The alternative would result in the RTB facing substantial disruption due the high demand of crucial services and support currently being provided by the service provider. This would have a detrimental effect on the RTB’s ability to deliver its services.The extension will provide the RTB with time to stabilise the system and re-tender for the provision of the services. The RTB cannot change contractor at this time without significant inconvenience & disruption to its business and without threatening its ability to deliver core services and meet its statutory obligations.


Winner: Southwestern Business Process Services Limited (now Capita Customer Solutions Limited)