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Procurement

CEC Procurement Approach

Ensuring the Careers and Enterprise Company (CEC) receives value for money, procures with necessary transparency, utilizes robust due diligence procedures to assess potential suppliers, and in line with best practice is of paramount importance. It enables us to deliver to the best of our ability and mitigates the risks to the company, and our public funding, associated with poor purchasing decisions.

 

Principles

The principles guiding this approach is that CEC:

  • Follows best practice in line with the expectations of our funders, partners, and beneficiaries;
  • Demonstrates absolute equity and transparency in its decision-making processes;
  • Follows UK laws, where applicable, that govern how CEC should buy goods, services and works over a specified value or ‘threshold’;
  • Ensures Value for Money is delivered on contracts placed.

 

Approach to Procurement

What we buy - The typical range of goods and services we often buy from suppliers include:

  • Training for Careers Leaders, Enterprise Advisers and Careers Hub staff
  • Digital tools, digital development hosting and IT security services
  • Expert advice
  • General business services, e.g., legal, audit, facilities, compliance
  • Subscriptions and licenses
  • Travel and venue hire

 

Transparency - CEC advertise new contracting opportunities in the following places, where appropriate:

 

Delta: the CEC e-tendering portal - Delta is an e-tendering system used by CEC. It is a password-protected online service. Potential suppliers should register with Delta so that they can:

  • view opportunities to tender
  • submit tender responses

For help with registration please use the support links on the Delta portal.

 

Spend Thresholds - Where we expect the estimated value of a contract to be over the relevant threshold, we must advertise our requirements on Contracts Finder. For example, if the estimated value is above £25,000 (inclusive of VAT) CEC will publish the requirement on Contracts Finder, via Delta. Occasionally contracts are awarded without publication on Contracts Finder where the procurement route does not require it, for example, use of G-Cloud framework.

 

Evaluation - All contract selection will be based on clear, objective evaluation criteria, proportional to the size and complexity of the work.

 

Due Diligence - The standard Selection Questionnaire simplifies the supplier selection process for businesses, in particular smaller firms, across the public sector, and provides CEC the necessary assurance when contracting with new suppliers. The assurances will cover typically the Environment, Equality, Financial status, insurances, GDPR, prosecutions, previous poor performance, health and safety and quality assurance.

 

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) - We encourage SME’s to work with us directly, or as part of the supply chain, by having a tender process that treats SME’s fairly and by trying to keep our tender documents simple. Also read the following guidance for SMEs on doing business with government.

 

Payments - Contract terms and conditions for making payments will be clearly set out. Payments will be managed by our finance team for processing, in line with the Finance policy and procedures and in line the government’s prompt payment policy.

 

Confidentiality - The Company respects the confidentiality of technical and commercial information given by suppliers. All suppliers and potential suppliers are expected to reciprocate in respect of commercially sensitive information given to them. To protect against disclosure and unauthorised use of confidential information, suppliers should be asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement, where appropriate (see the Company’s non-disclosure agreement wording).

In particular:

  • employees must comply with their requirements of confidentiality which necessitate that any confidential information, including individuals' personal records or information shall not be divulged to any unauthorised person or persons; and
  • satisfactory systems should exist to ensure that unauthorised persons do not obtain such confidential information.

 

Procurement Contact

If you have any further questions, please send a message to procurement@careersandenterprise.co.uk