UK5 - Tri Service Information Portal - New Version

The Authority, the Ministry of Defence ("MOD") intends to award a contract for 12 months with a value of £658697.73 to Oleeo Ltd for Tri-Service Job Information Portal.

It is considered that the direct award to the Supplier is permitted under Section 41 of the Procurement Act 2023 relying on the direct award justification set out in paragraph 6 of Schedule 5 for technical reasons.

"6) The following conditions are met in relation to the public contract

(a)due to an absence of competition for technical reasons, only a particular supplier can supply the goods, services or works required, and

(b)there are no reasonable alternatives to those goods, services or works."

The current contract for this provision was placed in 2019 and is due to expire in September 2026. The Authority's long term strategy is to carry out a competition for a replacement platform. To avoid a gap in service continuity whilst the Authority carries out a procurement process for the replacement platform, it requires the continuation of the current recruitment platform that is bespoke for military specific purposes, is Secure by Design certified and ready to go live in September 2026.

The Authority considers that only the Supplier can deliver the services in accordance with this requirement.

No supplier other than the incumbent has access to specific know-how, technical information and source code that is required to operate and maintain the existing certified platform.

If an alternative supplier was to deliver the required military bespoke recruitment platform, a certification process would be required before the platform could be used. As the certification timelines are unavoidable, the Authority considers that only the Supplier is able to meet the requirement of providing a military bespoke certified platform within the required timescales.

For these reasons, the Authority considers that there is an absence of competition for technical reasons as only the Supplier can deliver the Authority requirement of delivering a certified bespoke recruitment platform that is ready to go live in September 2026, and there are no reasonable alternatives to these services. A failure to maintain the existing in-service certified tri-service job information platform would leave an operationally necessary service unavailable to the Authority.