TRN 23-007 - Vehicle Maintenance - Belfast Region (DAC)

Location

Northern Ireland:

Description

Maintenance and Repair of EA Vehicles in the Belfast Region.

Total Quantity or Scope

The purpose of this contract is to provide Vehicle Maintenance and Repair of EA vehicles in the Belfast Area. EA Transport has a statutory duty to provide Transport Assistance to eligible pupils. EA buses in the Belfast area provide transport for SEN pupils only. Due to the specialist nature of SEN Transport, a lack of suitable alternatives for transport provision it is essential that the Belfast fleet is maintained to ensure operational safety and reliability.

Award Detail

CPV Codes

• 50000000 - Repair and maintenance services

Legal Justification

The EA Fleet Service is committed to ensuring, as far as reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare of children and young people using EA Home to School Transport. Vehicle condition, roadworthiness and reliability is paramount to this. The EA holds a Bus Operator Licence and has an obligation to ensure that the vehicles are always maintained at PSV standard, receive 12 weekly safety inspections, and a have an ongoing defect repair facility available. A Regional Vehicle Maintenance tender was published in June 2023 to outsource some of the EA vehicle maintenance requirements which included the Belfast Area. Despite an extensive premarket engagement exercise that resulted in 29 Economic Operators expressing a formal interest in the tender competition, the Regional Vehicle Maintenance tender did not return any successful bids for the Belfast region leaving the Fleet Service with no vehicle maintenance provision for the Belfast region after 1st August 2023. A Direct Award Contract is considered appropriate as no suitable submissions were received in response to the Regional Vehicle Maintenance tender – TRN-22-002- for the Belfast region. Direct Award Contracts can be entered into, where no suitable tenders, have been submitted in response to a tender procedure. This requirement meets the conditions of Regulation 32 (c) of The Public Contracts Regulations 2015, namely the following condition has been fulfilled: Use of the negotiated procedure without prior publication 32.—(1) In the specific cases and circumstances laid down in this regulation, contracting authorities may award public contracts by a negotiated procedure without prior publication. General grounds (2) The negotiated procedure without prior publication may be used for public works contracts, public supply contracts and public service contracts in any of the following cases:— (a)where no tenders, no suitable tenders, no requests to participate or no suitable requests to participate have been submitted in response to an open procedure or a restricted procedure, provided that the initial conditions of the contract are not substantially altered and that a report is sent to the Commission where it so requests;

Other Information

** PREVIEW NOTICE, please check Find a Tender for full details. **