An £8.5m joint open procurement for whole house retrofit
An £8.5m joint open procurement for whole house retrofit
CYD PROCUREMENT® | CASE STUDY
An £8.5m joint open procurement for whole house retrofit, taken from appointment to signed contract in under four months to meet a Welsh Government funding deadline.
The challenge
In late 2022 the Welsh Government confirmed three years of Optimised Retrofit Programme (ORP3) funding for every social landlord in Wales, £4.6m of it for Grŵp Cynefin. Contracts had to be signed by the end of March 2023, and the money came with a clear expectation that it would support local jobs and training. No existing framework was built around the communities Grŵp Cynefin serves, and its Tenants’ Working Group had set five priorities for any procurement: value for money, buying locally, quality, timescale and sustainability.
What Cyd did
Cyd was appointed on 6 December 2022 to design and run a tailored open procedure advertised on Sell2Wales, as a joint procurement with North Wales Housing so both landlords shared one contract and the cost of buying it. We wrote the full tender pack, led the evaluation with both landlords’ teams and issued the award. After award, Cyd challenged the winning bidder’s social value offer line by line so every commitment was measurable, and set up monthly reporting against it.
- Procurement strategy: a tailored open procedure in place of a framework
- Specification across six work streams, from PAS 2035 services to heat pumps and solar PV
- SSQ, quality, price and social value forms, and an amended JCT Measured Term Contract
- Evaluation and moderation with both landlords’ evaluators
- Award, standstill and feedback to unsuccessful bidders
- Social value clarification and monthly KPI reporting after award
The result
Deadline met
Contract notice published on 18 January 2023, five tenders received in February, award notified on 28 February and the contract signed on 24 March 2023, inside the Welsh Government deadline.
Quality and price, not one or the other
All five bidders passed selection. The winning tender, from a regional installer, scored 91.5 out of 100 on a 60% quality and 40% price evaluation, and was also the lowest price.
Social value with teeth
Every social value offer became a contractual obligation on award. The winning bidder committed to 12 new full-time jobs expected to be filled from North Wales and four new apprenticeships, worth 624 training weeks, reported monthly.
At a glance
£8.5m
Joint open procurement for two North Wales housing associations, six work streams, two-year term plus 12 months
Under 4 months
From Cyd’s appointment to a signed contract, and nine weeks from contract notice
5 bids, 91.5/100
All compliant, with the highest scoring tender also the lowest price
ORP-funded
Procurement fee eligible under the ORP3 grant and shared between the two landlords
The same model, elsewhere
Cyd’s founder first designed this approach for Flintshire County Council in 2021. Cyd has since used it for a £20m joint open procurement for Flintshire County Council and ClwydAlyn (2022 to 2026), and for retrofit procurement for Your Housing Group (SHDF Wave 2.1) and YorEnergy in Yorkshire. That work sits within a track record of more than £450m of contracts procured since 2011.
