month in review

UK public procurement in February 2019

4,218 UK public sector tenders and contract awards were published in February 2019 by 1,034 buying organisations, 2% down on January 2019. 5.8% of those with a recorded route to market were awarded directly, without competition.

notices

4,218

buyers

1,034

named a winner

2,921

awarded directly

5.8%

median value

£100,000

most active buyers

who won most

biggest changes on January 2019

Change in the number of notices published, against the month before. Measured as an absolute change and shown only where it is at least ten notices — a buyer going from one notice to four is a 300% rise and means nothing.

buyer	January 2019	February 2019	change
FCDO Services	162	32	-130
Home Office	17	99	+82
Radioactive Waste Management Limited	72	2	-70
The University of Birmingham	85	21	-64
Scottish Government	19	69	+50
North East Lincolnshire Council	9	50	+41
Government Internal Audit Agency	0	39	+39
Financial Conduct Authority	36	0	-36
Birmingham Childrens Hospital	0	34	+34
The Highland Council	30	1	-29

what was bought

the biggest awarded contracts of February 2019

contract	buyer	won by	value
Construction Works and Associated Services	Crown Commercial Service	Please refer to contracts finder for the successful supplier list +2	£30,000,000,000
2019 Social Work Framework for Selected Purchased Social Care Supports	Glasgow City Council	Action for Children +58	£2,558,460,000
AASC - Asylum Accommodation & Support Services Contract NEYH	Home Office	Mears Limited	£821,000,000
190_19 Fixed Price Energy	ESPO	BES Utilities +2	£625,000,000
West of England Pathology Network - Provision of Managed Service Agreements for Laboratory Services	NHS South West - Acutes	Beckman Coulter United Kingdom Ltd	£294,000,000
RTGS Renewal	Bank of England	Accenture (UK) Ltd	£150,000,000
MSS/078 - Sea Water Systems Equipment Support (Pumps)	Ministry of Defence, Ships, Marine Systems Support (MSS)	Devonport Royal Dockyard Limited	£100,000,000
National Centre for Computer Education Lots 1 -3	Department For Education	STEM LEARNING LIMITED	£67,716,385
GP IT Managed Services	The Common Services Agency (more commonly known as "NHS National Services Scotland") ("NSS")	EMIS Ltd +2	£65,000,000
Cambridgeshire County Council - Older People's Residential and Nursing Block Bed Contracts - South Cambridgeshire, East Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire	Cambridgeshire County Council	Etheldred Healthcare Ltd	£64,000,000

Contracts published in February 2019 that name a winning supplier, ranked by the value the buyer published, excluding those flagged as a maximum rather than a price. Figures are as published; gvtcx does not adjust them. A large contract is often a multi-year framework, so the value is what may be spent over its whole life — and where several suppliers share one framework, each is shown against the framework's full value rather than its own share.

how this was counted

Notices published in February 2019 across Contracts Finder, Find a Tender, Public Contracts Scotland and Sell2Wales, under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Counts are of contracting processes, not published notices: a tender and its award notice are one contract and are counted once.

There is no total value on this page, deliberately. Published values repeat a framework's entire ceiling against every supplier on it, so a month containing one large framework would read as a spending spike that never happened. The median excludes anything flagged as a ceiling, and the reasoning is set out in full here. Where a total IS defensible — contracts awarded to a single supplier, with no framework — it is on the direct awards page.

A month stays open to revision: publishers backdate, so figures for the current month and the one before it may still move.