Contract Award Notice

CUSTOMER Essex County Council (ECC) is the second biggest Local Authority in the UK, employing c 7000 staff. We serve a large geographical area supporting our residents across the full spectrum of demands that face large any Local Authority (LA) We are ambitious about our workforce and meeting the challenges ahead of us.

We want to achieve more with less and become a smaller, leaner organisation. To achieve this a highly skilled workforce is vital to achieving our ambitions.

ECC operate six clear functions, each with its own Corporate Leader. Technology Services, a part of the Finance and Technology function, offers an end to end service in the development and maintenance of corporate systems across the entire Council estate.

OVERVIEW In this present instance, the Customer is issuing this Invitation to Tender as a Further Competition under Lot 6 East of England Business & Administration of ESPO's Apprenticeship Dynamic Purchasing System (reference 554-18). Further information can be found in the next section, Requirement.

OBJECTIVES The objectives of the procurement are: • To onboard and upskill new apprentices into the function. • To train apprentices to industry standards while developing skills specific to Essex County Council. • To support apprentices in their aspirations for learning & development. • To drive retention by developing staff from 'the ground up'. • To establish a pipeline of talent into more specialist roles within Technology Services. SCOPE This Contract shall be established for the sole use of Essex County Council Additional information: ECC used this Invitation Tender to conduct a Further Competition exercise underneath ESPO Apprenticeship Dynamic Purchasing System (ADPS) 554-18 for the provision of Level 3 IT Solutions Technician Apprenticeship.

All Service Providers who have been assigned on Lot 6 East of England Business & Administration of the ADPS are invited to submit a tender. All tenders received (that are compliant i.e. submitted in accordance with the tendering instructions) will be evaluated in accordance with the evaluation criteria as set out below.

Tenders should be prepared and submitted (using Part B of this Invitation to Tender document) in accordance with section 5, Instructions for submitting a tender of this document. At the ECC's discretion, Tenderers were invited to clarify their tender, as an aid for evaluators to fully understand their offers.

All Tenderers should nonetheless take care to fully explain their offering in their tender submission. It is unlikely that presentations or interviews will be held as part of the evaluation process.

The Contract will be awarded to the Tenderer which scores the highest marks following the evaluation of all tenders (in accordance with the scheme described in section 4, Evaluation of Tenders). ESPO are supporting Essex County Council in issuing the ITT for any portal administration duties.