Contract award notice
Results of the procurement procedure
Section I: Contracting
entity
I.1) Name and addresses
Education Scotland
Denholm House, Almondvale Business Park
Livingston
EH54 6GA
UK
Telephone: +44 1412420131
E-mail: stephen.phillips@gov.scot
NUTS: UKM
Internet address(es)
Main address: http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/
Address of the buyer profile: https://www.publiccontractsscotland.gov.uk/search/Search_AuthProfile.aspx?ID=AA11402
I.2) Joint procurement
The contract is awarded by a central purchasing body
I.4) Type of the contracting authority
National or federal agency/office
I.5) Main activity
Education
Section II: Object
II.1) Scope of the procurement
II.1.1) Title
Provision of Hosting and Support Services to Glow Blogs
II.1.2) Main CPV code
48190000
II.1.3) Type of contract
Services
II.1.4) Short description
Provision of hosting and support services to glow blogs on behalf of Education Scotland.
II.1.6) Information about lots
This contract is divided into lots:
No
II.1.7) Total value of the procurement
Value excluding VAT:
765 051.00
GBP
II.2) Description
II.2.2) Additional CPV code(s)
48190000
II.2.3) Place of performance
NUTS code:
UKM
II.2.4) Description of the procurement
Glow is a digital environment for learning and teaching and helps learners and educators to benefit from social and collaborative services in a safe online space anytime, anywhere and on any device.
Glow comprises of a number of different web services that are made available to its users via a central authentication and portal service (GAPS) (currently provided by RM Education Ltd). It has four key Glow Services that are provided by Education Scotland:
— Glow Online Productivity Suites (GOPS) (currently O365 and G Suite for Education),
— a blog solution (currently WordPress),
— a broadcast/meet solution (currently Skype for Business).
There are also other applications that are available within glow, some of which use the centrally provided authentication through federated identity services.
A national service desk and service desk portal provides support to glow customers, offered by the authentication provider via the telephone and online, to the glow customers. The service desk also takes support calls for defined glow services, passing such calls over to the relevant supplier but ensuring glow customers have a single point of contact. There is a requirement for the glow blogs host and support Contractor to provide a service desk function to further enhance this for glow blogs specific incidents and requests.
The national service desk facility provides second line support and is open to a defined list of glow users within each glow customer. The service desk is available 0800 – 1800, Monday to Friday, 52 weeks a year with the exception of Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year’s Day and 2nd January. Service desk calls vary across the year, with volume of calls substantially higher during term time although calls are still received during school holidays.
There will be 4 constituent work packages:
Overview
(A) Infrastructure Improvements and Migration
The Glow Blogs service is currently hosted on amazon web services. The purchaser would like to improve the infrastructure and hosting of the service to improve performance and user satisfaction. The purchaser has commissioned a third party Technical Architect to design a new Target Architecture for Glow Blogs and now seeks support to build and migrate to that Target Architecture. This section covers the requirements for this build and migration effort.
(B) Application Hosting and Support
This section covers the requirements for ongoing hosting and application support for Glow Blogs. This includes hosting, service management, service desk, maintenance and support.
(C) Application Improvements
This section covers the requirements for a number of improvements to the Glow Blogs service that the purchaser wishes to make within the current calendar year. The Purchaser seeks support for this development work.
(D) Call-off Contract for Development Support
This section covers the Purchasers requirements to establish a call-off contract for development support throughout the lifetime of this contract in order to provide support to maintain and improve the Glow Blogs service through time.
II.2.5) Award criteria
Quality criterion: As set out in tender
/ Weighting: 70 %
Price
/ Weighting:
30
II.2.11) Information about options
Options:
No
II.2.13) Information about European Union funds
The procurement is related to a project and/or programme financed by European Union funds:
No
II.2.14) Additional information
Economic operators may be excluded from this competition if they are in any of the situations referred to in Regulation 58 of the Public Contracts (Scotland) 2015.
Section IV: Procedure
IV.1) Description
IV.1.1) Type of procedure
Open procedure
IV.1.8) Information about Government Procurement Agreement (GPA)
The procurement is covered by the Government Procurement Agreement:
Yes
IV.2) Administrative information
IV.2.1) Previous publication concerning this procedure
Notice number in the OJ S:
2018/S 170-387031
Section V: Award of contract
Contract No: EDUC-0000217
A contract/lot is awarded:
Yes
V.2 Award of contract
V.2.1) Date of conclusion of the contract
16/01/2019
V.2.2) Information about tenders
Number of tenders received: 1
Number of tenders received from SMEs: 1
Number of tenders received from tenderers from EU Member States: 0
Number of tenders received from tenderers from non-EU Member States: 0
Number of tenders received by electronic means: 1
The contract has been awarded to a group of economic operators:
No
V.2.3) Name and address of the contractor
Affinity Digital Tech Ltd
Charles House, 18 to 21 Charles St
Truro
TR1 2PQ
UK
Telephone: +44 7739362472
NUTS: UKK3
The contractor is an SME:
Yes
V.2.4) Information on value of the contract/lot (excluding VAT)
Total value of the contract/lot:
: 765 051.00
GBP
V.2.5) Information about subcontracting
Section VI: Complementary information
VI.3) Additional information
The scoring system used to evaluate the award criteria in the ITT will be as follows:
0 — Unacceptable. Nil or inadequate response. Fails to demonstrate an ability to meet the requirement.
1 — Poor. Response is partially relevant and poor. The response addresses some elements of the requirement but contains insufficient/limited detail or explanation to demonstrate how the requirement will be fulfilled.
2 — Acceptable. Response is relevant and acceptable. The response addresses a broad understanding of the requirement but may lack details on how the requirement will be fulfilled in certain areas.
3 — Good. Response is relevant and good. The response is sufficiently detailed to demonstrate a good understanding and provides details on how the requirement will be fulfilled.
4 — Excellent. Response is completely relevant and excellent. The response is comprehensive, unambiguous and demonstrates a thorough understanding of the requirement and provides detail of how the requirement will be met in full.
The estimated value of the requirement is between GDP 750 000 and GDP 850 000.
This contract was awarded after using the negotiated procedure without prior publication. This procedure was used as no compliant bids were received after advertising the requirement under the open procedure on 2 occasions.
(SC Ref:573262)
VI.4) Procedures for review
VI.4.1) Review body
Education Scotland
Denholm House, Almondvale Business Park
Livingston
EH54 6GA
UK
Telephone: +44 1312445748
Internet address(es)
URL: http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/
VI.5) Date of dispatch of this notice
08/02/2019