Issue - meetings

RESOLVED:

1.    That the approach outlined in the report was approved.

2.    That authority be delegated the Executive Director of Economy, Growth & Commercial , in consultation with the Leader of the Council, to award contracts for Surrey County Council and appoint Service Providers (suppliers) to provide a range of Soft Facilities Management Services to Orbis Property Services internal and external customers.

Reason for decision:

The current arrangements for the services expire at intervals between 31 October 2018 and 31 March 2019.  The contracts which expire first are:

·         Pest Control – 30 September 2018

·         Building and Washroom Cleaning – 31 October 2018

·         Window Cleaning – 31 October 2018

·         Manned & Patrol Security – 31 October 2018

Of the above contracts Building and Washroom Cleaning has potential for significant transfer of staff from more than one contractor to another and therefore requires a well-planned mobilisation and transition period.  Manned and Patrol Security also has some staff transfer implications.  The minimum time considered desirable for this would be two months. This means that the above contracts needed to be awarded by the end of August 2018.

[The decisions on this item can be called in by the Corporate Overview Select Committee]

The Cabinet Lead Member for Corporate Support introduced this report that described how the Council had a number of contracts (13) expiring between October 2018 and March 2019 all related to the provision of Soft Facilities Management services. These contracts provided the following services:

a)         Grounds Maintenance & Arboriculture Services

b)         Cleaning – Building and Washrooms

c)         Cleaning – Windows

d)         Pest Control

e)         Waste Collection

f)          Waste Collection – Confidential

g)         Security – Manned Guarding and Patrols

h)         CCTV & Access Control Servicing and Maintenance

These services were required to allow the Council to safely and compliantly operate its property assets, such as corporate offices, libraries, adult and children’s social care facilities and Surrey Fire & Rescue properties.

In September 2015, Surrey County Council Cabinet approved the business plan for to establish a public sector partnership to create an integrated business services organisation called Orbis delivering business and support services to each authority.

Officers from each of the three partner Councils had redesigned the specifications and performance standards currently in place to create consistent output based requirements.  This would drive these services to be delivered with optimum use of resources and allow suppliers to determine innovative solutions which would be flexible to meet the standards required and customers who received the service.  In response to a Member query she reported that each of the three councils involved would maintain their sovereignty and Orbis would monitor quality control more closely in order to maintain confidence.

Three options were considered for the procurement of these contracts based on analysis and the intelligence received from the market and public sector partners:

·         Option 1: Procurement of a Total Facilities Management (TFM) service provider. (This would entail offering all of the services and others currently not in scope (such as helpdesk, porterage and caretaking) under a single provider across all partners.)

·         Option 2: Procurement of single service provider for each, or a combination of the services (For example procure a single cleaning provider for all three partner Councils, or procure a single combined waste collection, confidential waste and pest control provider for all three Councils)

·         Option 3: (The approved option) Design a flexible procurement process which allowed suppliers to bid for any combination of the services, and for any sovereign authority (for example Grounds Maintenance in Surrey and / or East Sussex, or Cleaning and Pest Control in Surrey only etc.)

The Cabinet Member reiterated that it was the management of services to be brought back in-house and that direct provision would be undertaken locally.  The contracts were to be let on an initial 3 year period, with the option to extend for up to 2 further years. This would allow Property Services to review the delivery of the integrated services model in the medium term and whether further opportunities to deliver financial and non-financial benefits emerge.

RESOLVED:

1.    That Option 3: Design a flexible procurement process which allowed suppliers to bid for any combination of the services, and for any sovereign authority was approved as  ...  view the full minutes text for item 127