黑洞社区

More than a dozen consultants have won places on a long-awaited 拢750m public sector consultants framework, 黑洞社区 can reveal.

Capita, Jacobs, Mace, Pick Everard and Mott MacDonald were among the big winners, landing spots on at least four of the five lots of the Project Management and Full Design Team Services framework, awarded yesterday evening by the government鈥檚 private sector procurement partner UK SBS.

Other winners included Gleeds and Parsons Brinckerhoff (successful on at least three lots), Faithful & Gould (successful on at least two) and Deloitte, Hyder and WYG (successful on at least one).

黑洞社区 was only able to 鈥� a 鈥渙ne stop shop鈥� covering all consultancy services, project management, cost management and design team services 鈥� at the time of publication.

The fifth lot 鈥� for public clients working overseas, including the Foreign Office 鈥� could not be confirmed, although 黑洞社区 understands Turner & Townsend and Aecom were among the winners on this lot.

, Gleeds ranked top in terms of total score on three of the four lots, while Mace topped the fourth lot.

The framework was weighted 70:30 in terms of quality to pricing criteria. Mace topped all four lots in terms of competitive pricing. Gleeds topped two of the lots in terms of quality, while Hyder and Deloitte topped the other two on quality.

The awards are now subject to a two-week standstill period.

A number of major consultants missed out on all four UK lots, including Turner & Townsend, Rider Levett Bucknall, Aecom, Ridge, Mouchel and Gardiner & Theobald 鈥� all of which were on the previous four-year iteration of this framework, which only covered the UK.

A number of unsuccessful bidders told 黑洞社区 today they were considering their options and did not rule out challenging the UK SBS鈥� framework award.

The framework has been dogged by controversy for over a year. It will go live in June, over a year later than the government originally intended, after it was repeatedly delayed due to a prolonged consultation period, alterations to the framework requirements and over 400 tender clarifications in the weeks leading up to bids being submitted.

The framework was originally meant to go live when the previous iteration expired on 16 June 2013.

Many public sector clients have used alternative procurement routes for consultants over the intervening period and many consultants have expressed scepticism as to whether clients will return to using the UK SBS framework when it goes live.

The UK SBS framework can be used by any public sector body that wants to use it, including all government departments, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, local authorities and quangos.