If your tender is above threshold for The Procurement Act 2023 (or The Public Contracts Regulations 2015 if your tender has already started), then there are certain processes that you must follow once you’ve selected your winning bidder:
Notification of Intent to Award
Once you have confirmed your winning bidder the Notice of Intent to Award (NOITA) correspondence will be issued to both the successful and unsuccessful bidders (including your incumbent supplier, if applicable).
The NOITA triggers the start of the mandatory standstill period. The standstill period ends at midnight on the 8th working day (day one counted as the day the Contract Award Notice and Assessment Summaries have been issued to successful and unsuccessful bidders). It must end on a working day and if you’re issuing late in the day you may wish to consider issuing the following day to allow a full 8 day window for bidders to review the information and consider any challenge. The following day is the first day the law allows the school/Trust to enter a contract with the awarded supplier.
Depending on the type of procedure you have run, at the point of advising your successful bidder of your decision, you may need to request the documentary evidence of all the ‘self-certifying’ elements of the tender process such as certifications, accreditations, insurances and financials e.g. ISO 9001, Cyber Essentials, Public and Employers Liability insurance, audited accounts etc. We say “may” because some of the documentation may have already been uploaded by the supplier to the Central Digital Platform so can simply be downloaded from there.
Communication of decision
Please note you must not have any contact with your successful bidder during this 8 day window. You are also unable to enter into any legal agreement until the standstill period has ended.
If your incumbent supplier has not been successful in retaining the contract we strongly recommend you liaise with them about how this will be communicated to the staff. Whilst the team work on your school/Trust site(s) they are employees of the contractor and so it’s important you discuss when the communication will take place and who should be present.
In our experience, a joint meeting is advisable as this enables you to be a part of that conversation, to answer any questions and address any concerns the team might have regarding the incoming contractor. This ensures a consistent positive message. To make certain it happens as soon as possible after the end of the standstill period, you may want to organise a tentative date and time for the meeting during the standstill period. However, the meeting itself must not take place until the standstill period has ended. Similarly, if your incumbent supplier has been successful then this decision cannot be communicated to their staff until the standstill period has ended. You are welcome to speak to them about ongoing operational issues in relation to the existing contract delivery but you must not discuss the new contract award.
End of Standstill
Assuming the standstill period ends with no incident you can get in touch with the winning bidder and arrange the required meetings to start the mobilisation (or remobilisation if the incumbent has successfully retained the contract).
You will need to work on finalising the legal agreement (contract) to reflect the successful bid. This usually involves the updating of Schedules with the submission from the successful bidder e.g. agreed KPIs, the pricing schedules, embedding their tender documentation and so on.
As mentioned, to complete this, you will require the agreed Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) and we therefore suggest this is an agenda item when you first engage with your new/current supplier. It is important to ensure the KPIs discussed with the awarded supplier are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timebound). We have a blog with some guidance on this here.
If you are looking for a potential starting point for KPIs, please refer to the awarded supplier’s uploaded supporting documents within their tender submission as they may already have provided some sample KPIs you can consider.
In summary, once the standstill period has concluded you are free to liaise directly with your successful bidder, to confirm plans for mobilisation and bespoke the legal agreement ready for signature.
N.B. The Procurement Act 2023 went live on 24th February 2025. The guidance in the blog post relates to the new legislation. If your tender commenced under the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 then the guidance is slightly different. If you are unsure what applies to your specific procurement please get in touch.
