Is your school finding it challenging to find a school meals provider, due to the size and or location of your school? Other schools in your locality may have the same challenge. You may wish to consider undertaking a procurement process jointly.
A cluster procurement is a procurement process conducted on behalf of a group of schools by a nominated lead school. On successful appointment of a school meals provider, each school in the cluster will have their own separate contract with the provider.
Schools wishing to undertake a cluster procurement must form their own cluster group.
The lead school will manage and administer the procurement process on behalf of the participating schools, including:
Agreeing the same chosen service delivery model* with the schools in your cluster and gathering each school’s details to populate the tender documentation template;
Publishing the competition on www.etenders.gov.ie;
Issuing and responding to clarification requests;
Receiving and managing tender submissions; and
Issuing outcome notifications to tenderers.
*Details of the four available service delivery models are set out on page 7 of the Cluster Procurement Template.
At the evaluation stage, it is recommended that each participating school is represented on the evaluation team. Upon conclusion of the procurement process, each school will enter into its own separate contract with the successful provider.
For the avoidance of doubt, once individual contracts have been signed, each school retains full responsibility and autonomy in relation to the management of its contract. This includes all contractual decisions, such as contract performance management, monitoring of service delivery, and decisions regarding contract extensions, without any requirement to consult or obtain agreement from the other schools that participated in the cluster procurement.
Prior to the expiry of the initial contract term (Year 1), each school will independently determine whether to exercise the option to extend its contract for a further year (Year 2). Where a contract is extended into Year 2, the school will again independently decide whether to exercise the final extension option for Year 3.
Schools wishing to undertake a cluster procurement must contact the Schools Procurement Unit (SPU) at procurementsupport@spu.ie for further guidance and to obtain the Cluster Procurement Template.