Danum Academy - Catering Services

Danum Academy is seeking a suitably experienced catering contractor who has experience of working within the secondary school or HE/FE market place, ideally with a strong operational base within the Doncaster area, thus allowing for both adequate contract support and operational flexibility that is to be delivered to support the contract as and when required moving forwards into this contract term.

The scope of the contract covers all catering and hospitality provision within both sites, which are within a one mile radius. The successful contractor will be expected to deliver a concise and detailed method of management reporting at the end of each month thus updating the senior management team within the Academy on the contract performance.

The catering contract being offered will commence on 1 January 2016 for an initial period of three years, concluding on 31 December 2018, and will be offered on a guaranteed performance basis.

The contract offered covers the scope for the provision of all catering services within the Academy, which currently includes breakfast club, morning break, lunch, all hospitality and free issue requirements. Free school meals and hospitality will be charged based on consumption and at net food cost.

Whilst the Academy’s objective of value for money is a priority, innovation and continued improvement of the current in-house catering service throughout the contract term will be pivotal to the success of the new contract. The Academy is looking for a contractor who will continue to evaluate standards, process and procedures to reflect the high levels of achievement within the Academy.

In support of the Academy’s high expectations of the catering service, bidders are required to ensure that The Living Wage is factored into their proposals for all catering employees and that a proactive approach is taken to catering staff training.

The Academy expects the successful contractor to enable the continued development of catering through the provision of an innovative, healthy food service, with fresh, seasonal, locally sourced ingredients such as bakery products being prepared on-site. Food for Life Silver accreditation reflects the minimum standard of catering required. Actual food sales for pupils and staff in the period 2013/14 were circa £210K.

The successful contractor shall demonstrate how they shall support the Academy with regard to meeting the new Ofsted inspection requirements, introduced from September 2015, in actively promoting wellbeing, health & healthy eating. It is necessary that pupils are able to demonstrate a knowledge of how to keep themselves healthy through healthy eating and the successful caterer should define their role in meeting this objective. Active compliance to the school food standards, as published by the Children’s Food Trust is essential.

The Academy invites bidders to consider offers of Capital Investment, to assist in upgrading and/or harmonizing the current facilities.

Additional information: Interest in the pre-qualification process should be expressed via email only to pqq@litmuspartnership.co.uk, clearly stating within this email which contract / notice you are referring to. Please also provide, as a minimum, a contact name, full company postal address and telephone number.

The closing date for receipt of the Pre-Qualification Questionnaire is 6.7.2015 (12:00). Tenderers are required to ensure that documents are obtained and returned to The Litmus Partnership Limited, by email to pqq@litmuspartnership.co.uk, by the above closing date and time. Policy documents (where indicated in the

Pre-Qualification Questionnaire) shall be uploaded to The Litmus Partnership Limited pre-qualification website prior to this closing date and time.

It will be the Tenderer’s responsibility to obtain any necessary documents and access to The Litmus Partnership pre-qualification website in order to submit a response by the closing date and time.

The contracting authority reserves the right not to award any or part of the contract which is the subject of this OJEU notice and reserves the right to terminate the procurement process at any time.

The contracting authority will not be liable for any costs incurred by those expressing an interest in tendering for this contract opportunity.

The contracting authority will consider variant bids, evaluating them (so far as the variant or the evaluation of the variant is in the opinion of the contracting authority practicable) on the same basis as a conforming bid, but shall not be obliged to accept any such bid in preference to a conforming bid even if the variant bid scores more highly. No variant will be considered unless the bidder simultaneously submits a conforming bid.