Maintenance of Client Side Systems, 10 Floors, Victoria Street

The Authority has a sub-lease of 10 floors in a building on Victoria Street on an internal repairing insuring lease basis which imposes on the Authority responsibility to maintain and repair the interior parts of the demised premises whilst the Landlord is responsible for maintenance and repair of the common areas, shared M&E, exterior and structure of the building. To that end, the Landlord has a contract with building managers who have sub-contracted Vertex, following an open competition, to maintain the building including the main plant.

In practise, the integral nature of the maintenance arrangements are such that there is no practical way for the Authority to meet its maintenance responsibilities as a tenant in a safe and integral manner and from a technical compatibility and interface perspective with the overall building systems by means other than via the Landlord's pre-existing maintenance contractor, Vertex.

Splitting maintenance responsibility causes issues in terms of the demarcation of responsibility, and this is made even more difficult as the Authority does not occupy the entire building, As an example, while the radiators on each floor are the responsibility of the Authority, the boilers supplying the heat belongs to the Landlord and therefore cannot be separated. The main plant and back-end systems owned by the Landlord are demand led from the tenant floors, and there is no practical way of splitting the systems.  Operationally it would be technically extremely challenging, and lead to disproportionate costs to employ a separate contractor to the Landlord due to problems with shared services such as heating and cooling due to split responsibility.

Accordingly, paragraph 7 of Schedule 5 (additional or repeat goods, services or works) of the Procurement Act 2023 applies.