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 has over 900 pupils on roll. The school is currently expanding with the addition of ten new classrooms, four of which will replace portakabins the other six being brand new purpose built space. The school converted to academy status in March 2015.
The Background
This cleaning project is the latest in a long line of projects that Minerva has completed on behalf of Saint Cecilia’s and their Business & Development Manager, Dave Cobb.
Dave approached Minerva about launching the re-tender of the school cleaning services early as he was dissatisfied with the standard of the service being provided by the incumbent and did not want to use the options to extend beyond the initial contract term.
The project was to be a fully compliant Public Contracts Regulations (2015) ‘Restricted procedure’ compliant project requiring an initial Selection Questionnaire (SQ) stage and a secondary Invitation to Tender (ITT) stage. The key requirement for the school was to have a contractor who would deliver a clean school and minimise the need for intervention from the school staff. There were also additional requirements, such as sanitary bins, daytime cleaning and potentially the supply of washroom consumables.
The Results
This was an extremely attractive tender and there were a high number of expressions of interest which resulted in 16 bidders making a formal submission at the SQ stage of the process which were then shortlisted to five to take through to the ITT stage.
Due to the COVID pandemic, we were unfortunately unable to run the usual face to face meetings. As a result, we flexed to respond to this and so the site visit was managed through photos and videos of the site and we had to run the presentation day via our online meeting portal (GoToMeeting) which was a challenge but also a resounding success.
In addition to a thorough, impressive and financially attractive tender submission, the winning bidder also helped the school with a very specific problem they had in relation to the refectory floor which had a very poor surface and finish due to previous inappropriate cleaning techniques. This has now been completely transformed and back to the standard the school expects.
Customer Feedback
Another successful procurement project. We now have a cleaner building at lower cost with a responsive and professional contractor.
Dave Cobb, Business & Development Manager
