NHS Estates Technical Standards & Guidance Programme

2. Description of procurement

The NHS Estates Technical Standards and Guidance Programme team have responsibility to support the NHS Constitution right for patients to be cared for in a "clean, safe, secure and suitable environment" through publication of a suite of technical guidance documents, available free of charge and disseminated via the NHS England website https://www.england.nhs.uk/estates/ Health Building Notes (HBNs) give best practice guidance on the design and planning of new healthcare buildings and adaptation or extension of existing facilities. Health Technical Memoranda (HTMs) give comprehensive advice and guidance on the design, installation and operation of specialised building and engineering technology used in the delivery of healthcare. Specific skills required depend on the nature and coverage of individual guidance documents. Some will be provided by NHS England staff, but the majority of the work to deliver these documents will need to be provided by external contractors: Scoping - review existing guidance, both NHS related and more widely, to determine the specification of the guidance to be produced; Production - work with the specified teams and stakeholders to develop the guidance, test and edit it; Engagement with the appropriate stakeholders from NHS England, DHSC, across the NHS and relevant industry. Professional services needed include: Technical Authors Subject Matter Experts Technical Editors Other specialist skillsets not available within NHS England, including healthcare architects, healthcare planners, engineers (e.g. mechanical, electrical, decontamination, fire) with specialist healthcare experience, medical equipment specialists, etc. Project and Programme Management (PMO) resource to manage delivery of the programme and relevant interfaces. These will be detailed more fully in the ITT. In 2022 a prioritisation exercise was carried out with key stakeholders to identify the Top 40 out of the current suite of c.107 documents that require updates or new guidance developing. These priorities were assessed against key benefits criteria, including patient safety, quality and alignment with NHS England objectives. See attached document for details. For the previous procurement, fixed prices were sought for guidance where scoping documents were available and/or production was required for top priorities. For the remainder of the guidance documents within the contract, indicative prices were sought, based on an estimate of document complexity, to provide flexibility within the call-off contract arrangement to adjust priorities within the programme if required, e.g. urgent operational or patient safety issues. We are seeking views and considering the model we will use for the new contract. NHS England is asking potential bidders to complete a market assessment questionnaire to help inform the forthcoming procurement exercise. Questionnaires must be submitted by 06-12-2022 via https://forms.office.com/r/EBxdXBGMpb The market engagement exercise aims to inform potential providers of the opportunity and collate feedback. A presentation and Q&A session is planned for w/c 12-12-2022. If you would like to join the online supplier event, please send your details including your name, title, organisation name and contact information (email and telephone) to russell.greenwood@nhs.net Any procurement conducted because of this notice will be advertised separately and all organisations wanting to participate will need to respond to the procurement advertisement as and when it is published.