The Director of Finance has decided to approve the direct award of a contract for strategic transport support services to Mott MacDonald Limited pursuant to Lot 7 of the Multi-Disciplinary NHS Shared Business Services Healthcare Planning Construction Consultancy and Ancillary Services Framework, to run for a period of 24 months from 8 July 2024. 

To provide consistency of high quality consultant support across key projects in line with the timescales required for the deadline of March 2026 as set by the Simplification Pilot and to ensure that the Council has the required flexibility to secure specialist consultant support, where increased capacity or specialist technical skills including transport modelling are required, in order to achieve the development and delivery of regeneration and transport projects within the Borough. It is considered the bringing a new contractor into support the service at this time could add risk to the regeneration programme.

To ensure that the Council develops and delivers schemes which will deliver increased levels of sustainable and active travel as set out in the emerging Local Plan, Birkenhead 2040 and to support actions required to address the Environment and Climate Emergency and the target in the Cool2 Strategy to ‘a complete transition to fossil fuel free local travel by around 2030’.

The contract does not provide the supplier with any guaranteed level of work and alternative procurement exercises can still be undertaken for projects if considered appropriate.  The contract enables the Council to secure services where required to respond at pace or where internal capacity or specialist skills are required to support project delivery. Given the scale of the transport and regeneration programme and the required pace of delivery an option to secure additional capacity and technical support in this manner is essential. The Council has previous experience of support from Mott MacDonald Limited and have been satisfied with the quality and pace of support provided and notably Mott MacDonald Limited has supported the Council to secure significant funding for a number of key regeneration projects. 

Do not award the contract and undertake separate procurement exercises for individual tasks –given the regeneration focus needs to prioritise the Simplification Pilot deadline of March 2026 this would lead to delays in delivery whilst procurement exercises were completed and increase demands placed on regeneration, procurement and legal colleagues.  The use of different organisations for different pieces of work may also lead to inconsistencies of approach.

Do not award the contract and undertake a competitive procurement exercise – awarding the contract via a framework is a compliant procurement process which is considered the most appropriate route to follow given the current deadline of the Simplification Pilot and the assessment of the risk of bringing in a new consultant to support projects.

Undertake the work in house – the work would require significant resources and for some areas of the project specialist transport skills such as traffic modelling will be required.  There are only 2 full time Officers in the strategic transport team therefore there is not the capacity to undertake all the required work in house.  If the work is not undertaken it will impact the Council’s ability to provide the required information bring in external funding and deliver the necessary transport schemes to support the growth ambitions.

Seek support from a different consultancy – depending on the scale and timescales of projects separate tender exercises could be undertaken.  This contract has an annual headroom, so work is managed and allocated in line with that.  During the 24 month contract a procurement exercise will commence to seek a provider for a new Strategic Transport Contract so other providers will also be able to respond to that opportunity.