Pre-Market Questionnaire for the Supply and Delivery of Feminine Hygiene Products for the Education Authority

This is not a tender exercise by the Education Authority. The Education Authority wishes to engage with the market to seek their views on establishing a flexible, value for money framework with a supplier for the supply and delivery of Feminine Hygiene Products to various locations throughout Northern Ireland. The framework and associated call of contracts may be used by NI educational bodies including: Primary and Post Primary schools under the control of the Client, Catholic Maintained Schools, Irish Medium Schools in NI, both Controlled and Grant Controlled Integrated Education Schools, Voluntary Grammar Schools and Independent Schools. Further/Higher Education Colleges are currently considering their requirements for Feminine Hygiene Products and may wish to be a named participant on this framework. At time of publishing this market engagement exercise the Authority does not have visibility on Further/Higher Education Colleges associated budget for these products. However, details will be provided at the point the Authority publishes the final tender documents. The estimate value of the framework is circa, £2,000,000 at this point of time, however the final framework value may increase. The engagement exercise is to establish the level of market interest and alert the market to the potential procurement competition. Any information gathered through this market consultation exercise will inform internal business planning and any possible subsequent procurement process and will NOT be appraised in any future tender evaluation exercise. Please note that participation or non-participation in this preliminary market consultation exercise shall not prevent any supplier participating in any potential procurement process, nor is it intended that any information supplied shall place any supplier at an advantage or disadvantage in any forthcoming procurement process. For the avoidance of doubt, this is the scoping phase of the project and is not part of a formal procurement process.