Saint Cecilia’s Church of England School is a Church of England Secondary School based in Wandsworth, London.
The school is an 11-18 mixed secondary school. The school opened in September 2003 on the site of Wandsworth Boys School and currently has over 1000 pupils on roll. The school is growing and will expand by 30 pupils a year for the next six years.
The Background
Saint Cecilia’s Church of England School conducted a tender process to award a contract for the provision of catering services that commenced on 1 August 2022. The contract that was tendered was for three years with consideration to possible extensions of two additional 12 month periods.
The school has historically outsourced the provision of their catering services and wished to continue with this due to the benefits derived from not having to run the service in-house.
Saint Cecilia’s Church of England School is committed to ensuring that ‘best value’ is achieved in respect of all supplies of goods and services and that there is compliance with procurement regulations. As such, Dave Cobb (Business & Development Manager) had no hesitation in appointing Minerva to facilitate the procurement process as he’d done on several occasions previously.
Results
There was a good level of interest in the opportunity for the services for Saint Cecilia’s. Twelve suppliers expressed an interest in the opportunity for catering and it resulted in seven complete SQ responses being received. Five suppliers were subsequently shortlisted to the ITT stage and submitted their responses within the given deadline. Invitations to the Presentation Day went out to four contractors before the resultant PCR2015 contract being awarded to Caterlink.
Caterlink submitted the most advantageous bid and the highest scored ITT submission overall, Caterlink demonstrated a thorough and well thought out approach to the Catering Services for Saint Cecilia’s Church of England School. Dave Cobb was pleased with the competitiveness of all the bidders, especially as the Caterlink proposition included a substantial guaranteed surplus for the school.
Throughout the bid process and presentation Caterlink stressed their proposition which included tackling queues at the servery, their support of updating the cashless facilities and the gifted investments (Grab ‘n Go stations, 6th form facilities and Point of Sale marketing). All this as well as producing fresh and nutritious food for the pupils and staff.
Customer Feedback
“A complex tender for catering, but a fantastic result for the school and the pupils (financially and on quality of service). I was particularly keen to involve pupils in our selection process and we managed to make that happen really well.”
Dave Cobb, Business & Development Manager, Saint Cecilia’s Church of England School
