The government has kicked off the bidding process for the £2.3bn Management Consultancy Framework Two (MCF2) agreement.
The contract will contain four lots covering, respectively: business consultancy services; procurement, supply chain, and commercial consultancy services; complex and transformation consultancy services; and strategic consultancy services.
Lot one, which addresses business consultancy services, comes with an estimated value of £800m. Suppliers on this lot will be tasked with providing “a broad range of business consulting services for both advice and delivery”, according to Crown Commercial Service.
The second lot is for procurement, supply chain, and commercial consultancy services. It comes with a spending pot of £250m. Suppliers in this lot will be expected to consult the government on “complex commercial procurement transactions, [and] strategic, operational, and dedicated large-scale deployments”.
A value of £750m is attached to the third lot, which addresses complex and transformation consultancy services. Chosen providers in lot three will provide advisory and delivery services related to “programmes or portfolios of work across government which are complex, multi-disciplinary, transformational, and large scale”, CCS said.
The final lot is dedicated to strategic consultancy services.
“Services are likely to be assignments providing high-level strategic advice to permanent secretaries, ministers, and other senior civil [or] public servants,” CCS said.
This lot has an estimated value of £500m.
Contracts for each of the four lots will be awarded for an initial period of two years, with two optional one-year extensions available.
Bids are invited until 18 May 2018, and up to 1,000 suppliers will ultimately be awarded a spot on the framework. Potential bidders are invited to attend a webinar on the 25 April, where CCS “will provide an update on the structure and approach of the framework, and answer some frequently asked questions”.
Consortia and joint ventures are entitled to bid for the MCF2 framework. To do so, each consortium or JV must pick a lead member to submit the bid. If a new legal entity is being created, this process must be complete by the time contracts are awarded, according to CCS.
The launch of the MCF2 deal follows CCS’s failure to award lot one of the Management Consultancy Framework. The lot was supposed to cover business consultancy, but mistakes made during the construction of the deal saw the procurement agency decide to scrap the planned opening lot, and just award the seven specialised, while building a follow-up business consultancy-based framework as a complement. The newly created MCF2 vehicle covers a broader range of services than the first lot of the initial consultancy framework was intended to.
The Management Consultancy Framework, which came with an initial estimated value of £2bn, awarded its seven lots in two tranches last year. In September, it went live featuring 22 suppliers of finance consultancy, and 20 providers of audit services. The remaining five lots – covering HR, health and community, education, infrastructure, and ICT and digital – launched in November.
Sourced from Public Technology.net