Putney High School (GDST), London

Putney High School

Case study

I started as the Business Manager at Putney High School knowing that one of my first jobs would be to tender the catering and cleaning contracts. The same contractor had been on site for fourteen years and a review was long overdue.

I wanted to make sure that the school was getting best value for its contracted out services. Were we paying the right price? Could we provide a better service within our existing budget or even lower? How could we innovate to enhance our provision, keeping it fresh and exciting?

Given the number of other projects in hand, we decided to use the services of a professional, specialist consultancy to steer us through the potential minefield of evaluating and selecting a suitable contractor to manage our services. We met with Balance Partnership, who were able to demonstrate that they had the in depth experience and Independent Education portfolio to not only work with us but more importantly undertake the following key elements of the process:

  • Tender Project Management
  • Service Evaluation
  • Contractor Selection
  • Pre Tender Qualifying Questionnaire preparation (PQQ)
  • Invitation to Tender documents preparation (ITT)
  • Managing Contractor site visits and information packs
  • Tender Analysis
  • Contractor shortlist selection
  • Contractor presentation management
  • Assisting final Contractor selection
  • Advice and ongoing project follow up

Client's Comments

The key benefit to me as Business Manager, was being able to rely on the Balance Partnership's experience and professionalism to undertake the often time consuming tasks involved in collating accurate information, preparing the documents needed to allow contractors to provide an apples for apples comparison and undertaking internal and external contractor visits. I believe that by using the services of the Balance Partnership we were confident of making the correct assessment of our services and making the right decision for the right reasons at the end of the project.

The other key element of using Balance Partnership was that while they undertook the entire project on behalf of the School, they not only kept us fully informed with progress but more importantly involved us at strategic stages of the overall process.

The result is that we have now appointed a new Contractor who we believe will deliver sustainable and improved customer-focused service levels within agreed financial boundaries.

Alison Hinkson, School Business Manager