Awarded to Convivio

Start date: Wednesday 1 May 2019
Value: £199,800
Company size: SME

National Leadership Centre, part of the Cabinet Office

Networking, Information and Community Service for new National Leadership Centre (Cabinet Office)

7 Incomplete applications

6 SME, 1 large

17 Completed applications

14 SME, 3 large

• Published: Thursday 7 February 2019
• Deadline for asking questions: Thursday 14 February 2019 at 11:59pm GMT
• Closing date for applications: Thursday 21 February 2019 at 11:59pm GMT

Overview

• Summary of the work: The service will enable users to find information about the new Leadership Centre serving the most senior leaders in the public services. This will include enabling the leaders to connect with each other and to provide a simple route for applications for the programme (low volume).
• Latest start date: Wednesday 6 March 2019
• Location: No specific location, eg they can work remotely
• Organisation the work is for: National Leadership Centre, part of the Cabinet Office

About the work

• Why the work is being done: We are creating a new Leadership Centre for the top senior leaders in the public sector. We will be providing a programme (residential courses for small cohorts), events up and down the country and building a network amongst them.; ; The commission is for a service to support the centre with information, connecting the network, and resources.
• Problem to be solved: The new Leadership Centre needs to build its presence, advertise its programme, share its expertise and connect senior leaders of the public services. ; The Centre is being created to address the skills needs of the most senior public services leaders and their isolation; the idea that "it's lonely at the top", and conducts research into the most effective interventions. The service will act to support these three areas and to help build the brand of the new Centre as it launches. ; The original report can be found here https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/752064/6.4846_CO_CPSL-Report_A4-P_WEB_NoLogo__002_.pdf)
• Who the users are and what they need to do: As a senior public services leader I want to find information about the new leadership centre, the programme, eligibility, events I may attend, contact other senior leaders, find potential jobs, find leadership expertise.... so that I can become a better leader.; ; As a public sector worker I want to find expertise on leadership to improve my abilities and my team working.
• Existing team: We have nine Civil Servants currently looking after strategy, the programme, the network and research and we are currently running a recruitment process to further staff each of these four teams. The primary relationship will likely be with the Head of Network and Community or their designated digital lead, looking to the Programme and Research teams for content.
• Current phase: Not started

Work setup

• Address where the work will take place: The National Leadership Centre (NLC) team is currently based at 1 HorseGuards, Westminster, but alternative central London accommodation is being explored. The work may be delivered remotely with significant interaction with the NLC team - to be determined as appropriate.
• Working arrangements: We are reasonably flexible about our working arrangements, and open to discussion about the best way to work together. We anticipate that we would want a weekly meeting, supported by more informal interactions during the week. We are happy to work with hangouts, skype etc for the most part. Some in-person interaction will be required with the wider team.

Additional information

Skills and experience

Buyers will use the essential and nice-to-have skills and experience to help them evaluate suppliers’ technical competence.

• Essential skills and experience:
  • Experience working with Government or the wider Public Services
  • Experience working with the Digital Service Standard
  • Experience getting from standing start to multiple functionality in six months
  • Strong GDPR understanding and capability
  • Experience of integrating external supplier data streams

How suppliers will be evaluated

• How many suppliers to evaluate: 5
• Proposal criteria:
  • Approach and methodology
  • How they’ve identified risks and dependencies and offered approaches to manage them
  • Value for money
  • How the approach meets user needs
  • Team Diversity
• Cultural fit criteria:
  • Work collaboratively
  • Bring a diverse team
  • Share learning and build capability
  • Fail fast and learn
  • Communicate clearly and work with others with less technical expertise
• Payment approach: Capped time and materials
• Assessment methods:
  • Written proposal
  • Case study
  • Work history
  • Presentation
• Evaluation weighting:

  Technical competence

  65%

  Cultural fit

  10%

  Price

  25%

Questions asked by suppliers

• 1. Are you working with any existing suppliers in relation to this tender opportunity? If you are, who are they?: No
• 2. Can you host a call with suppliers about this opportunity where we can have a live Q&A and the discussion notes are shared on this tender ad? This has proven helpful on other DM opportunities.: Yes, the timing for this is listed in the advert: Tuesday 12th at 2:30-3:30pm. https://meet.google.com/beg-cmpu-fii
• 3. I clicked on the link to view the original report, but was told the web page could not be found. Please advise.: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/public-service-leadership-academy; ; or search: "October 2018: Better Public Services Report by the Public Services Leadership Taskforce"
• 4. Is there an indicative budget range?: We estimate that the Discovery and Alpha phase would be (Phase 1) £50k and the whole project £200k ; We will accept bids to undertake the Discovery and Alpha and/or the whole project
• 5. What is the anticipated contract length?: We expect that the first phase (Discovery and Alpha) would be six weeks and the longer project is tbc, depending on the discovery.
• 6. Is this bid for help with all stages (Discovery / Alpha / Beta /Live)?: Yes the bids can either be for all the stages or for Discovery and Alpha.
• 7. What activity have Deloitte done to help with those initial findings, was this through pre market engagement?: Deloitte are delivering a separate project which researches stakeholder/ user needs to inform the design of the centre, however we anticipate that some of the findings may be reusable. Their schedule of work is such that this won't be completed before the end of the six week discovery/alpha - but they will be sharing findings as they work - so this is potential bonus information rather than replacing or running the discovery.
• 8. One of the questions mentions integrating numerous data streams. Any more details on this?: The data streams in this instance would be different sources of information for job vacancies - we envision the service could include job search functionality and at this stage there is no single source of senior jobs across the whole public sector. This would probably involve some integration of information from Public Appointments, Non Executive Roles and other manual gathering of jobs information - the Centre team would be expecting to help with this.
• 9. What does success look like for this project? How are you planning to measure the effectiveness of the project?: The first phase - Discovery/ Alpha would need a relatively quick delivery of a basic, appealing and credible service for initial engagement and advertising of the Centre. In the long run a successful service would draw users to it with appealing and useful functionality - the outcome being that they engaged with the Centre and the network.
• 10. You note co-location is not essential - I assume it is possible though?: It can certainly be explored - colocation in our current premises might be challenging due to the security restrictions of the building but we are exploring other locations for the team currently and could find best option for both parties.
• 11. Are you looking for one supplier for whole thing or will you consider parcelling out the contract?: Yes we certainly can consider parcelling this out - we are looking for bids for both discovery and alpha or the whole project
• 12. When will the first Programme be advertised? and when is it due to start?: The Programme will start from September but be advertised relatively soon
• 13. What does the CO team look like?: There are currently nine permanent staff members and we are mid-recruitment cycle so this will likely double (or more) imminently.
• 14. ... could your people visit our team if we worked off-site?: Absolutely (within reasonable travelling)
• 15. What are the expected outputs for Phase 1?: Phase One outputs would be Discovery work and Alpha service
• 16. What roles will be managing the service?: At the moment this will be managed by the Head of Networks and Community, we may change this given we are recruiting currently.
• 17. Are there any preferences for technology at this point based on existing infrastructure?: None - the widest possible use and access is the goal.
• 18. Will this service need to undergo a GDS service assessment?: We are expecting yes, excepting that we have permission for this not to be on GOV.UK
• 19. Is there any existing style guide available?: No
• 20. How does the current team work?: At the moment we are typically co-located Tuesday - Thursday in Westminster and we use G-Suite to collaborate.
• 21. Will the supplier need security clearance?: At this point, we don't expect so. Current limitations would be the building that we work in requires security clearance, so we would not seek to have a team working in this building and that the details of the network might require clearance so the permanent team could manage this instead.
• 22. If two suppliers score equally on all other criteria, can you confirm that the supplier offering the most diverse team will win this opportunity?: Yes
• 23. We note that Team Diversity will be used as a criteria for scoring the proposals. What dimensions of diversity will be used (eg gender, ethnicity, age, visible/invisible disabilities etc) and how will suppliers be required to submit this information?: Yes. We will start with considering the nine protected characteristics. If teams are equally diverse on this basis we will also consider broader diversity such as socio-economic backgrounds, neurodiversity and experience. ; ; Suppliers should outline this in their written proposal.
• 24. You mentioned that Deloitte are conducting some user research work on the supplier call. Are they applying for this opportunity?: Deloitte are conducting separate work for the centre exploring the needs of our users - looking at the programme, their engagement with the network and their perspectives on leadership. ; ; We do not know if they are considering bidding for this project and no conversations have been had about it.
• 25. Who from your team will be scoring applications for this opportunity and what positions do they hold?: The panel will be made up of Civil Servants within the team and in related areas of expertise.
• 26. Please can you provide details of what the next steps are following this initial application i.e. deadlines for the written proposal/presentation?: Deadline is ; ; The deadline for this stage is Thursday 21 February 2019 at 11:59pm GMT and this should cover a written proposal, case study, and work history.; ; A presentation will be asked for from those who make it through the initial stage.
• 27. In a previous answer you state that you will use the 9 protected characteristics to score suppliers’ diversity. In order to quantify diversity, will suppliers be required to provide information on individual team members’ sexual orientation, religion, age, disabilities etc, and how will these be scored?: We would like to clarify this. We are committed to ensuring that we use our procurement to support our values and equalities objectives. Diversity is an important consideration for the Centre but it does not prohibit any supplier from winning or affect any other scoring aspect. ; We would like suppliers to consider the diversity of their teams when they bid. Within the scope of Cultural Fit, diversity is one element that bids will be scored on. Points will not be awarded per diversity characteristic. We will assess whether the team is diverse, which could include a range of elements.
• 28. You confirm that “the supplier offering the most diverse team will win this opportunity”, all other criteria being equal – as positive discrimination is generally unlawful in the UK, can you confirm that this is not unlawful with regards to Equality Act 2010.: We would like to clarify this. We are committed to ensuring that we use our procurement to support our values and equalities objectives. Diversity is an important consideration for the Centre but it does not prohibit any supplier from winning or affect any other scoring aspect. ; We would like suppliers to consider the diversity of their teams when they bid. Within the scope of Cultural Fit, diversity is one element that bids will be scored on. Points will not be awarded per diversity characteristic. We will assess whether the team is diverse, which could include a range of elements.
• 29. The DOS guidance says that after a Q&A session "you must post all questions and answers from each session on the Digital Marketplace so suppliers who didn’t attend aren’t at a disadvantage."Are you able to provide us with these details please?: Yes, all the questions were noted and have been published on this page for ease of access.
• 30. You state that suppliers can bid for Discovery and Alpha or all stages. Can you confirm that if the selected supplier only bids for Discovery and Alpha you will re-tender for Beta and Live phases?: Yes that is correct
• 31. “The deadline for this stage is Thursday 21 February 2019 at 11:59pm GMT and this should cover a written proposal, case study, and work history.” but the standard DOS process is to respond to just the Skills and Experience sections. Can you confirm that this is the case, and the dates when shortlisting will take place?: We have established that the system will not permit us to ask for the breadth of information we were intending, so please rest assured that the answers to questions on the form will be sufficient. We will ask for the further information at the next stage.; ; The shortlisting will take place in the week after the advert closes and we will let suppliers know the results asap.
• 32. In the answer to question 26, you state, "The deadline for this stage is Thursday 21 February 2019 at 11:59pm GMT and this should cover a written proposal, case study, and work history." Do you also require the proposal, case study and work history to be submitted by 21 February in addition to the 5 initial questions in this application? If so, please can you confirm how/where these should be submitted, as this isn't clear? Thank you.: For the 21st February deadline the five questions in the application will be sufficient, thank you.
• 33. The deadline for this stage is Thursday 21 February 2019 at 11:59pm GMT and this should cover a written proposal, case study, and work history'.Please would you advise how we should provide the written proposal: We have since clarified that the system will only permit the answers to the five questions, so suppliers will be asked to provide the written proposal, case study and work history at the next stage.
• 34. You state that "we will assess whether the team is diverse, which could include a range of elements." What information would you need from a supplier in order to fairly assess and compare team diversity across suppliers, especially around non-visible characteristics such as sexual orientation, religion and non-visible disabilities?: The Centre is committed to procuring in line with its values. Suppliers are asked to demonstrate that they have considered the diversity of their teams as a component of their offer. Suppliers should make their own decision as to how they wish to communicate this, in line with their own values and their team approach.