Termination of Pregnancy Service (TOPS) - REF:0AQ/ANGPROC/16/008

NEW NOTICE
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REQUIREMENT:
Norfolk Clinical Commissioning Groups (West/North/Norwich/South) wish to commission a Termination of Pregnancy Service (TOPS) including Early Medical TOPS and TOPS up to 24 weeks gestation. The contract will be in accordance with the NHS Standard Contract for a 3 years term, with a possible 24 months extension option beyond the stated contract term and a new contract service start of Wednesday 5th April 2017. The contract value is £2,034,000.00.

The service aims are:
- High quality responsive impartial support/advice to service users who request an abortion, regardless of age/ethnicity/language/disabilities/mental health needs/sexual orientation/religious/personal circumstances
- Provide abortion methods clinically appropriate for gestation/clinical circumstances, including those with complex needs
- Improve users sexual health by providing sexual health screening/counselling/referral to treatment appropriate for sexually transmitted infections incl. Chlamydia, HIV
- Encourage contraception use, ensure women have information about local contraception advice/services
- Support in treatment options/decision
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IMPORTANT NOTE:
This requirement was previously advertised but was an incomplete procedure and stopped, without the award of a contract. This action was taken to ensure that the Tender adheres with procurement principles for the ITT/ Specification requirements to be transparent, in that the requirements are clear. The procurement procedure was discontinued and the contract is now being re-advertised under the publication of a new Contract Notice. Previous publication concerning this procedure - Notice number in the OJ S: 2016/S 143-258494 and Notice number in the OJ S: 2016/S 176-316055.
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GUIDANCE:
We are following an open procurement process.

Interested organisations wishing to participate in this procurement must express an interest by registering on the Pro-Contract portal at https://procontract.due-north.com/Login

All Tender documents are issued via the Pro-Contract site and are available to access.

You must complete and submit a Tender Response via the Pro-Contract portal by the submission deadline of 16.00hrs on Monday 21st November 2016 if you wish to bid for this contract. Responses received after this deadline may not be considered.

Please see the timeline for this procurement shown in Section 3 of the ITT pack document – which you need to download. The ITT pack document is accessible on the Pro-Contract site at https://procontract.due-north.com/Login

See the ITT pack document for milestone timeline, instructions, scoring and evaluation criteria, Contract, Specification and embedded document templates that need to be completed/ uploaded and submitted as your Tender Response.

Suppliers need to register and login to download the TOPS ITT pack which contains all of the Tender documents, then complete the Tender Response Template and other Supporting Documentation electronically - when completed, upload all documents and submit the Tender Response via the Pro-Contract portal by the stated deadline.

To increase your document number/ size allowance, you can combine several documents into a ZIP file. Bidders are responsible for removing or redacting any sensitive material, and ensuring that you have uploaded and submitted the correct documents.

Submission of Tenders will only be accepted via the Pro-Contract e-tendering system.

Submission of the Tender Response will only be accepted via the Pro-Contract portal.

A clarification question and answer process will operate during the procurement process, in accordance with the timetable in the ITT pack document. The objective of the clarification process is to give Bidders the opportunity to submit any clarification questions regarding the procurement process, service requirements (service Specification within the Contract document Appendix 4) and any detail in the ITT pack, including embedded documents. Please submit queries using the Clarification Question Template in Appendix 5 – Supporting Documents of the ITT pack document, and submit your form using the Pro-Contract portal messaging facility at https://procontract.due-north.com/Login. Any queries should clearly reference the (if any) appropriate paragraph, section and bullet point or question number in the documentation. The period in which you can submit clarification questions commences on the day that the ITT is issued.

Bidders are urged to review the Tender documentation immediately upon receipt.

In order to treat all Bidders equally, the Commissioners will provide an anonymised copy of any clarification questions and answers to all Bidders that have registered on the portal for this requirement. Any responses to clarification questions will be issued via Pro-Contract. Bidders must use the Pro-Contract messaging facility for all communication related to this procurement.

For more information on how to use Pro-Contract, Bidders are asked to refer to the guidance documents available on the Pro-Contract e-procurement system.