The E N Procure Legals Framework is a collaborative procurement consisting of three Landlords who are all members of Efficiency North – Berneslai Homes of Barnsley, St Leger Homes of Doncaster and A1 Housing, Bassetlaw.  Berneslai Homes will be acting as Contracting Authority.

The procurement process will be hosted using the Supplier Contract Management System which is a procurement portal for Councils within the Yorkshire and Humber region, https://scms.alito.co.uk/ All tender documentation will be distributed and returned via this portal.

The OJEU Notice will be posted week commencing 19^th December 2011 with the procurement process taking approximately 18 weeks to complete.

The Framework will have an initial duration of 4 years, with an option to extend beyond this duration, and will consist of two lots which will be open for the use of social landlords and other public sector bodies based within the Yorkshire and Humber and Sheffield City Region.

Using the NEC3 Professional Services Contract the E N Procure Legal Services Framework aims to achieve through the application of a collaborative contracting approach:

• to deliver expenditure and process efficiencies against the annual framework throughput when benchmarked to existing Legal Services procurement arrangements;
• standardised service scoping and procurement call off processes to improve the control and visibility of cost;
• to offer improved certainty in terms of time, quality / performance and cost outcomes;
• to develop through the framework an intelligent cost database, which offers improved visibility of outturn cost.

Part funded by the Homes and Community Agency (HCA), designed by NPS Group Property Design and Management Services and built in partnership with Keepmoat, each one of the 91 homes will use a ground-breaking combination of energy-saving and carbon-reducing features that will make the new estate the biggest-ever “Zero Carbon” social housing scheme in the country.

Every one of the two, three and four-bedroom homes have mechanical ventilation and heat recovery systems, solar photovoltaic panels that enable the landlord  to sell power back to the National Grid, superior levels of internal air tightness and grey water recycling as well as many more energy-saving features.

Homes in the new neighbourhood will draw heat from its own “Eco Centre” – a district biomass heating system that will be powered by renewable wood pellets produced in Yorkshire.

Energy savings are expected to be equally impressive.  Tenants will save significant amounts of money each year on household energy bills, with water bills reduced by using recycled water to flush toilets. Residents of the scheme and in the local area will be invited to learn how to make these savings through sessions held at the specially designed “Eco Centre”.

WDH Chief Executive Kevin Dodd commented: “WDH is very proud to have created the UK’s largest Zero Carbon social housing development. In addition to the creative look of the homes, they offer fantastic savings on energy bills. The entire project has had some outstanding benefits for the local community, including the WDH apprentices who learned many skills while working on the site.”

Click here to find out more about Wakefield and District Housing and the Park Dale project 

The Framework, which has an estimated £975m demand, has been developed by Efficiency North, and is divided into 3 sub-regions, West, East and South, to ensure that local SMEs had every opportunity of securing a place.  Efficiency North are delighted that amongst the mix of successful contractors 80% were local small to medium-sized companies including 15% micro-sized companies.  

The framework will provide works, materials and services which can be accessed by any public sector body and principally by Social Landlords.  Provision is contractually embedded into the Framework for local training, apprenticeship and employment programmes, sustainability initiatives, SME and supplier engagement and local economic regeneration. The framework is designed to deliver expenditure and process efficiency savings of 10% against annual throughput. Any surplus revenue accrued is collected in a 4 Good Fund which can be accessed by authorities using the framework to fund projects which support the strategic themes of Efficiency North and realise social and economic benefits in the local community.

A project team comprised of staff from the 5 Efficiency North member organisations leading the procurement, East Riding of Yorkshire Council, Wakefield and District Housing, Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council, St Leger Homes and Sheffield City Council, all worked closely together to ensure the highest level of accuracy evaluating the hundreds of PQQs, tender documents and thousands of references.

Commenting on the Elemental Works Framework Contract Award, Lee Parkinson, Director of Efficiency North, said: “We are delighted to have achieved such a diverse offer in the Framework, with a mix of larger national players as well as smaller local businesses. All the successful contractors demonstrated in their tender submissions that the improved certainty of time, quality and cost the Elemental Works Framework aims to establish will be delivered.  We are very much looking forward to working with them all.”

Click here for full lists of successful contractors by sub-region and by lot.

Buyers from over a dozen YORbuild Framework Contractors will be on hand to speak to delegates with a view to finding new suppliers to add to their supply chains for the numerous public sector building projects around the region.

A series of talks will outline what the YORbuild framework is, how it works and how businesses can find work with it.

Over £40m of building work is coming up in and around Wakefield so delegates will be briefed on what’s types of trades and materials are going to be required.

The YORbuild procurement framework helps public sector clients to build everything from schools to police stations. They are hoping that hundreds of small and medium sized construction related businesses will come along to discover how to find work in the busy public sector construction sector.

YORbuild targets the £1.2 billion spent each year on public sector construction in Yorkshire and Humber.

David Galloway of Leeds City Council said “We’re committed to improving construction procurement, and widening the benefits it can bring to the public and voluntary sectors in Yorkshire & Humber”.

Lee Parkinson, the YORbuild Development and Performance Manager and CEO of Efficiency North added “The YORbuild Supply Chain Engagement Programme is a major step forward in getting the right people and firms working on the YORbuild projects.

As a managed collaborative framework we are keen to ensure that we achieve more than just procurement efficiency.

Through YORbuild’s integrated framework management strategy we achieve efficiency and improvement through our commitment to working collaboratively with the supply chain to ensure that they understand what we are trying to achieve and to drive real added value.”

Attendees should register at www.yorbuild-castleford.eventbrite.com

To find out more about YORbuild visit www.yorbuild.com

To find out more about the YORbuild supply chain engagement programme visit http://www.thinkzero.co.uk/yorbuild

The Framework  is designed to complement the existing YORbuild framework and new YORcivils Framework and together with Efficiency North’s E N Procure Framework will provide a one stop shop to meet all requirements of public sector and third sector procurement across the Yorkshire and Humber region.  All  four frameworks share common themes, processes and aims.  All have integral Employment & Skills plans and promote efficiency savings.

YORconsult principally provides construction related services for civil engineering, building, housing and specialist areas such as renewable energy but also includes environmental services, estates services, local authority forward planning services and development management services.  The framework is divided into two regions.  North and East region is being procured by East Riding of Yorkshire Council and the South and West is being procured by Sheffield City Council.

This has been a great opportunity for regional collaboration. Reflecting their founding support for YORbuild, the Regional Improvement and Efficiency Partnership YoHr Space are providing funding to resource the procurement of YORcivils and YORconsult.

Lee Parkinson, Development and Performance Manager for the YORbuild Framework and CEO of Efficiency North, said of the new collaborations: “In late 2006 when the vision for YORbuild was developed it was seen as an ambitious aspiration to develop a suite of frameworks to meet the requirements of Local Authority procurement in the Yorkshire and Humber region.

“With YORbuild, YORcivils, YORconsult and the E N Procure Elemental Works Framework (led by Efficiency North) we can now see the vision becoming a reality. This provides an excellent opportunity to deliver effective and efficient procurement solutions across the construction sector whilst driving common value adding themes including employment and skills, supply chain management, carbon and waste reduction

To find out more about the YORbuild Framework go to www.yorbuild.com

The Hub will facilitate a smarter way of cross-organisational working.  The site has features and functionality similar to popular social media online networks, including personalised member profiles, groups, forums, an interactive meetings and events calendar, as well as a document sharing library, but is tailored to the needs of member organisations’ workforce.

Efficiency North believes the Hub to be ground breaking in consortium working in the sector.  it isn’t intended to replace but to reinforce the best practice benchmarking and project groups who meet bi-monthly at member organisation venues.  The Hub will enable tiers of staff who might not ordinarily have the opportunity to network with a wider group of peer professionals, providing a virtual space for them to keep up to date with all the latest developments both within Efficiency North and the wider sector, share their knowledge and explore fresh ideas and solutions together.

Commenting on the new websites, Lee Parkinson, Chief Executive of Efficiency North, said: “Being committed to supporting smaller, local companies in our wider Framework activities, we were delighted that such an inventive, high quality, yet affordable and efficient solution came from local business Diva Creative which has only 20 staff.  In these increasingly fast paced times, the flexibility of the new members Hub will be of immense benefit to our members in terms of time saved, quick and easy access to information and the knowledge and support of a wide network of professionals in the region, harnessing their professional expertise and experience to drive best practice and improved efficiency savings.”

The pubic facing site also links through to the Joint Tenants online forum.  Being committed to tenant involvement and participation the consortium includes a Joint Tenant Panel running alongside its Frameworks procurement, bringing together tenants from across the region to give them a voice in the decision making process.  Commenting on the Joint Tenants online forum, Joint Tenant panel Chair Colleen Adamson said, “The online forum is great news for the panel.  It will help the panel stay in touch and share all the latest news and information between meetings. It will also help us spread the word about potential community projects, funding sources and new ideas to tenants and representatives of local community groups and committees across the region.”

Efficiency North welcomes visitors to the new website.   All visitors are invited to comment on pages and share any of interest on social media networks Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

The E N Procure Elemental Works Framework for the procurement of contractors to carry out trades works commonly used in the improvement and maintenance of housing currently under development by Efficiency North is now into its second stage following an unprecedented level of interest from contractors throughout the region after the OJEU was posted on the Supplier Contract Management System (SCMS) in November 2010.

Procurement is on a sub-regional basis, West, East and South, to ensure that local SMEs have every opportunity of securing a place on the framework and Efficiency North have been delighted that a substantial number of regional and local SMEs were amongst the mix of hundreds of local and national contractors who responded. Many exceeded the brief in their PQQ returns, resulting in a shortlist of 230 companies in 38 lots over the 3 sub-regions being invited to tender on 8 April.

A project team comprised of staff from the 5 Efficiency North member organisations leading the procurement, East Riding of Yorkshire Council, Wakefield and District Housing, Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council, St Leger Homes and Sheffield City Council, have all worked closely together to ensure the highest level of accuracy evaluating the hundreds of PQQs and thousands of references.

The framework will provide works, materials and services which can be accessed by any public sector body and principally by Social Landlords. The framework will facilitate long term regional supply chain relationships and enable more SME engagement and access within the sector.

Following the second stage tender evaluation process the E N Procure Framework will be available from August 2011.

Commenting on this initial stage of the Elemental Works Framework procurement, Lee Parkinson, Chief Executive of Efficiency North, said: “The level of interest from local and regional SMEs has exceeded our expectations in this the first key gateway stage. We are pleased that our efforts to ensure that the entire market spectrum was engaged have been effective and we look forward to developing a competitive and high performance elemental works framework which can be accessed by the regions Public Sector Bodies.”

Find out more about E N Procure

The £8million funding allocated to Hull City Council and Keepmoat Homes’ project will support the delivery of 1,475 sustainable eco-efficient new and refurbished homes.  This aims to safeguard existing and generate new construction related jobs, with the investment in quality housing supporting major growth in Hull and renewable energy industries. 

Doncaster Council and private sector partners’ Gateway to the Sheffield City Region project will provide a major boost to economic growth across the region and act as a catalyst for attracting investment and creating long term job opportunities. 

Find out more about the Gateway to Sheffield City Region project

Find out more about Hull City Council and Keepmoat Homes project

Round 2 of Regional Growth Funding is open for bids from 12 April 2011.

Efficiency North are seeking to create a concession framework for roof mounted solar PV systems which will be available for their members’ use as well as within the East Midlands, North East and North West regions of England.

The concession framework will offer public sector landlords a rent a roof style solution for housing and other public sector owned buildings with the successful bidders providing an income to the landlords along with full finance, installation, maintenance and monitoring for the solar PV installations over 25 years in exchange for the feed in tariff.

The framework will be for one year with the option for a 1 year extension.

The tender is following a single stage open procedure and is being administered by Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council on behalf of Efficiency North. Tender documents can be found on the SCMS site under tender reference CS890.

Efficiency North Project Manager Carl Bairstow comments: “With substantial pressure on investment budgets we have significant interest from landlords from Yorkshire and Humber and within Efficiency East Midlands all wanting to get the best value offers they can from the growing solar PV developer market without the need for client investment. They are keen to see offers that will enable a broad range of tenants to benefit whilst also providing an income to enable re-investment in less well funded energy saving measures.”

The deadline for tender submissions is 12 noon Monday 11 April, with framework award expected mid May.

Download or read your copy here

• The E N Procure Project Team tells all about evaluating the PQQ stage of the billion pound Elemental Works Framework
• Find out more about our new E N Procure solar PV rent-a-roof concession and our work with YORbuild on the YORconsult Framework
• A1 Housing’s Head of Finance Stuart Morris talks about the benefits of belonging to Efficiency North
• A quick look forward to our new Joint Tenants online forum
• Follow EfficiencyNorth on Twitter Joining the conversation @EfficiencyNorth