Colleague Development · UK public procurement notice

The CDP Team seeks to appoint a ‘mixed economy’ of providers:

A single, high calibre, higher education establishment (or a set of establishments working together) with significant experience and expertise in developing and delivering a similar type of programme across Government or large scale public sector organisations.

A range of micro businesses and SMEs who are able to work together, either through a formal alliance or sub-contracting arrangement, to provide a more informal learning style e.g. mentoring, coaching, action learning, small group work. This will provide the participants with the opportunity to utilise their newly found skills in their working environment and support the continued learning. These provides are key to ‘hard wiring’ the new behaviours and mindset across the enterprise. It is anticipated some of these businesses may be located locally and already be part of the Sellafield Supply Chain and others will be located elsewhere in the UK bringing significant specialist subject matter expertise.

The brief to providers as part of the Invitation to tender (ITT) will provide the outcomes the CDP wishes to achieve and some guidance as to the type of programme we wish to commission, however there will be scope for providers to respond to the tender using their experience of how these outcomes can be best achieved.

A key part of the provider brief will be to ensure a single consistent message between the higher education provider and the other providers which will be set out in the performance management requirements for the contract. We expect some part of the performance management requirement to be outcomes based.

Providers will be expected to use a range of methods of learning and development to achieve the outcomes. Experience in this area shows that in order to achieve the best possible outcomes and achieve the maximum value for money and return on investment at least some of the programme should be immersive i.e. participants will undertake some of the programme at an offsite location on a face to face basis, taking them away from the

workplace and creating a shared learning experience with their peers on the programme. The proportion of the programme requiring residential stays is yet to be agreed, balancing the immersive learning outcomes with value for money, but there will be an expectation that participants will be able to be free of other work commitments during the programme modules.

Some aspects of the programme will be suitable to be delivered locally or virtually. Learning from similar programmes demonstrates that the deep emotional experience of undertaking this type of programme means that it is not suitable to be delivered wholly or substantially virtually as the course facilitators need to be able to ensure psychological safety is maintained throughout the learning experience.

The CDP will be a bespoke programme agreed with the preferred provider, however there may be some benefits of participants joining modules with participants from other industries in order to share learning and experiences and to experience different ways of doing things outside the nuclear industry.

In summary the provider brief, as part of the ITT, will look to set out the key objectives and outcomes to be achieved by the CDP but it will not set out in a curriculum style during the procurement process. On award of contract the CDP Team will work with the preferred provider to finalise the programme with the PIP Programme Board approving the final content.