Price Review 2024 - Supplementary Support

Location

Birmingham:

Description

This Voluntary Ex-Ante Transparency (VEAT) relates the intention to award of a contract to provide additional capacity to support the delivery of the Price Review (PR24), through the provision of flexible access to high quality resources across a range of technical skillsets within the scope of the following workstreams: Risk and return / cost of capital; Financial modelling; Data governance and modelling coordination; Direct procurement for customers; Costs; Outcomes and Leadership/ Coordination. The contract shall be awarded under Regulation 32 as Ofwat intends to award this public contract following the negotiated procedure without prior publication of a contract notice. Justification of this intention together with full details of the intended contract are included within sections II.2.4 and IV.1.1 of this notice.

Total Quantity or Scope

This is a VEAT notice and relates to Award notice reference 2022/S 000-029817 for the Delivery Partner for Price Review 2024. It is the intention to award a separate contract to two suppliers - Grant Thornton UK LLP and PA Consulting Limited. The contracts will be used on a need only basis to respond to changing requirements throughout the period of the contract, in particular for those projects where the existing Delivery Partner contract for PR24 may be unable to fulfil the requirement. The contract is intended to commence in September 2023 (subject to final agreement) and any required services shall complete by January 2025. The contract shall be capped to a value of GBP 1m ex VAT (GPB 1,200,00 incl VAT) for each supplier.

Award Detail

CPV Codes

• 66171000 - Financial consultancy services

Indicators

Legal Justification

We placed a Contract Notice via the Find a Tender Service (FTS) in December 2022 for the original services. Following an Open procedure, we received bids from 3 consortia, led by Grant Thornton UK LLP, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and PA Consulting Ltd. PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP was awarded the contract as the highest scoring bidder. Separate to the original contract award, additional capacity is required. This is a matter of strict necessity brought about by the following circumstances, all which were not foreseeable as follows: - In April 2023 after the tender process concluded, Ofwat secured approval from HMT to increase the size of its budget to enable delivery of additional regulatory work on behalf of customers and the environment. The scale of work required under a number of areas - including PR24 where infrastructure investment will be larger than previous price reviews - has increased as a result. - The need for Ofwat to have access to a wide range of advisors with the relevant capability and capacity and who are in a position to provide that support to Ofwat independently. To address this, Ofwat is undergoing a period of growth in its in-house capacity and further procurement to bolster its access to third party support. However, this will not be fully completed in time to for the Price Review process. Business Plans are received in October 2023 and we do not have sufficient time to retender for potential additional capacity to ensure the successful Delivery of PR24, including time for the necessary onboarding. To ensure successful delivery of PR24 we require flexible access to high quality resources across a range of technical skillsets. Therefore, it is the intention to award a contract to the two unsuccessful lead bidders from the original Open Procedure who also demonstrated access to these resources, along with their ability to deliver and to ensure best quality outcomes. The contracts will be used on a need only basis, in particular for those projects where the existing Delivery Partner contract may be unable to fulfil the requirement and for services of a lower value, up to a capped valued of GBP 1m +VAT for each supplier. It is our intention to adopt the original advantageous terms specified in the original tender process to ensure value for money. We welcome any questions or comments regarding this VEAT notice during the prescribed period – please contact the Ofwat procurement team at procurement@ofwat.gov.uk

Other Information

** PREVIEW NOTICE, please check Find a Tender for full details. ** NOTE: To register your interest in this notice and obtain any additional information please visit the myTenders Web Site at https://www.mytenders.co.uk/Search/Search_Switch.aspx?ID=230024. (MT Ref:230024)