At the very start of your project we will send two types of paperwork – some Minerva ‘admin’ paperwork, and then the paperwork that you need to complete as part of the tender documents preparation.
Admin paperwork:
Minerva Contract
We will ask you to sign a contract between your school/Trust and Minerva – this is the agreement that you are engaging Minerva to work on your project. Our contract will be sent to you via DocuSign for secure online signing.
Letter of Authorisation
We will ask you to send us a letter of authorisation. This is a letter with template wording on your school/Trust’s headed paper. We will use this to demonstrate (if required) to suppliers that we are authorised to request information on your behalf. It does not give us permission to sign anything on your behalf, and nor would we.
Procurement Process Approval Form
This is part of our process at Minerva to track and monitor key stages throughout the tender process. It will provide both you and us with an auditable trail of approvals and we think will make the management of the procurement process a lot smoother.
The document will move between us throughout the process such that we will complete the information on each stage at which point it will come over to you for approval and ‘signing’. Once you have done this it will return to us until the next stage is completed at which point we will complete that stage information and send back to you and so on until the project completes. It sounds complicated but is actually really straightforward and will make much more sense once you’ve seen it!
Ethics and Confidentiality Statement
We are aware that there could be number of different individuals at the school/Trust involved in the procurement process, and their degree of familiarity around procurement compliance is likely to vary. To assist you, and your colleagues, to remain compliant throughout the tender process we would recommend you issue the Ethics and Confidentiality Statement to anyone you believe may be involved in the process. This can be issued at any point, for example if additional personnel join the school/Trust or get involved in the procurement process in the later stages. The document outlines some guidance around what you should/shouldn’t do to make sure your tender process remains compliant.
Your Minerva Project Team
In order to ensure you know everyone you’re likely to come into contact with throughout the lifetime of the project we will send you details of the Minerva Project Team. This document gives you names, job titles and the roles that each individual in the team performs.
Tenders paperwork:
Project Checklist
In order to create a set of tender documents that fully reflect your school or Trust, it is vital that we understand the specific requirements of the service that you are tendering for. We will send you a comprehensive checklist for your project that we will ask you to complete. This will gather information about your school/Trust, the current service provision, any issues that you have faced, and any improvements or changes that you would like to see from the new provision. The checklist is completed online, and don’t worry, it saves your progress as you go, so it doesn’t need to be completed all at once!
TUPE / Sales data
If TUPE applies, then we will need details of staff roles and shift patterns. If the service is currently run in house we will send you a spreadsheet to complete (or you can send us your own!). If the service is outsourced then we will request this information from your incumbent supplier. For catering tenders we will also need the details of the annual revenue generated by the catering contract.
Legal Agreement
If you have opted to use the Minerva Precedent legal agreement then we will send you a draft version for your review. We look to issue the legal agreement with the tender pack when your project goes live. Please see the section in the Knowledge Base on Legal Agreements for more information.
