Servicing and Maintenance of the Nottingham City Hospital Aerocom Pneumatic Air Tube System

The contract is for the servicing and maintenance of the Aerocom pneumatic air tube system at the Nottingham City Hospital (the Services) to ensure the pneumatic tube system is subject to routine planned maintenance, mitigating the risk of downtime (e.g. due to a fault) and facilitate call outs in the event of such faults.

The pneumatic air tube system enables the Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust (The Trust) to meet its needs as a provider of healthcare services. For example, connecting wards, surgical rooms and departments with the hospital's laboratory and central pharmacy, shortening delivery times of samples, medicines and any associated documents - minimising the requirement for manual handling.

The Trust's in situ pneumatic air tube system at Nottingham City Hospital is manufactured by Aerocom UK Ltd.

The Trust requires a Supplier for provision of both planned and reactive servicing and maintenance of the in situ pneumatic air tube system at the Nottingham City Hospital.

The Trust's objectives are to maintain a high level of reliability and availability of its systems by ensuring sufficient provision of both planned preventative maintenance (PPM) and reactive response to call outs and call backs/breakdowns maintained at agreed performance levels, whilst ensuring value for money.

The Trust has the following key requirements:

• Guaranteed next day call out for reactive maintenance
• Minimum of 2 PPM visits per annum
• 24/7 telephone/remote support

It is understood the existing Aerocom pneumatic tube system in situ at the Nottingham City Hospital is a closed protocol system and only Aerocom UK Ltd are able to service, maintain and repair the system. Therefore competition is absent for technical reasons on the grounds

To substantiate this, a Prior Information Notice (PIN) notice was published as a Request for Information (RFI) to understand the market's capability to provide the Services.

Based on the response received to the RFI indicating the pneumatic system at the Nottingham City Hospital is closed protocol, the Trust has awarded the contract based on relevant grounds under regulation 32 (Use of negotiated procedure without prior publication) of the Public Contract Regulations.