COVID-19 Test Digital Platform

CPV: IT services: consulting, software development, Internet and support

Procedure method

Award procedure without prior publication of a call for competition

Legal basis

CELEX · 32014L0024 Public Contracts Regulations 2015 (Directive 2014/24/EU)

Procurement category

Services

Notice status

Awarded without competition

Procurement threshold

Unspecified in notice

Regulatory regime

Standard

Commercial structure

Stand-alone contract (no framework)

Competition type

Direct award (no call for competition)

GPA / WTO covered

Yes (GPA)

Recurring procurement

Unspecified in notice

First published

17 Feb 2021, 22:56 GMT

Last source update

17 Feb 2021, 22:56 GMT

Authority reference

CON 4474

FTS notice number

2021/S 000-003230

Classification (CPV)

IT services: consulting, software development, Internet and support

Delivery area

Yorkshire & Humber (UKE42)

Official registry OCID

ocds-h6vhtk-029405 Find a Tender

Why no open competition

The works, supplies or services can be provided only by a particular economic operator due to absence of competition for technical reasons

Published justification

1. The Covid-19 outbreak is a Public Health Emergency of International Concern as declared by the World Health Organisation on 30 January 2020. The UK Government's response to the national emergency posed by COVID-19 included putting in place arrangements for large-scale testing for COVID-19 on an urgent basis.
2. Upon transition of responsibility of the Digital Delivery Lead role, NHS Digital awarded the contract to the supplier following the supplier's prior engagement with DHSC.
3. NHS Digital is satisfied the tests permitting use of the negotiated procedure without prior publication (Regulation 32(2)(b(ii)) are met:

A. The works, supplies or services can be supplied only by a particular economic operator as competition is absent for technical reasons: Due to the highly bespoke nature of the testing services and the criticality of ensuring that the testing services continued uninterrupted, at the stage of contract award, the supplier was the only economic operator capable of facilitating the continuation of the testing services. It would be seriously counter-productive to the national effort to have carried out a procurement in respect of some or all of the workstreams being undertaken by the existing provider and/or that any attempt to potentially transition between providers in the context of ensuring that the relevant work progresses with appropriate rapidity could have led to material avoidable delay or risk of disruption to the service and the ability to access data which could have had a fundamental impact on the provision of testing services to citizens in England.

B. No reasonable alternative or substitute exists - The continuation of the testing services was and is critical to England's response to the Coronavirus outbreak and the containment of the spread of the virus. If the existing supplier was unable to continue in the short-term to provide the services due to the transition of responsibility to another provider identified by NHS Digital, this could have had a catastrophic impact on the success of the TTCE strategy and may have resulted in further spreading of the virus due to difficulties in testing and isolating those who have tested positive.

C. The absence of competition is not the result of an artificial narrowing down of the parameters of the procurement - this procurement is part of a procurement strategy by the UK government to provide a stable and effective digital testing platform to meet demand due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Publisher note: In addition to the sub-contracts referenced in V.2.5, the supplier also passes on to NHS Digital the charges at cost for a number of third party services. These third party services have an estimated value of £2,000,000 and are included within the total contract value of £51,000,000. The value likely to be subcontracted set on in V.2.5 has been calculated on the basis of the subcontracts set out in V.2.5, as well as the value of the third party services. These third party services include toolsets for the management of the software development process, as well as AWS cloud infrastructure for both non-production and production environments, used to deploy and host the web portal and iOS applications. The material third party suppliers providing services at the contract award date are as follows (the threshold for materiality is based on third parties providing services with an aggregate spend under the contract above £10,000): - Atlassian - AWS - BrowserStack - Scandit - Micro Focus Fortify - ServiceNow - UIPath It is the intention of NHS Digital to transition the contracts for these third party services in-house in the future. Scandit was transitioned to NHSD with effect from 1 December 2020 and as at the date of this notice, the other third party services are under review. In relation to section II.2.5, the contract was awarded to the supplier upon transition of responsibility of the Digital Delivery Lead role, due to the supplier's prior engagement with DHSC. Due to the highly bespoke nature of the testing services and the criticality of ensuring that the testing services continued uninterrupted, the supplier was engaged to facilitate continuity of service and transfer of responsibility from DHSC to NHS Digital. NHS Digital submitted its Contract Award Notice for publication in OJEU on 3 February 2021. However, due to technical difficulties with Tenders Electronic Daily this notice has not yet been published. NHS Digital has taken the decision to proceed with publication on Find a Tender to ensure it is meeting its transparency obligations.

• Deloitte LLPAwarded supplier Hill House, 1 New Street Square, London, London, EC4A 3HQContact phoneShow contact details

No document links were published on the notice.