Background
As part of our ongoing work with Barts Health NHS Trust, a major acute trust in London, the NHS Workforce Alliance supported the trust in appointing a new NHS compliant strategic partner to provide their managed staff bank service, ready to replace their existing contract when it expired in March 2024.
Objectives
Barts Health NHS Trust required support to help transition from their existing managed staff bank service to a new provider. The procurement project was a large scale and complex challenge. It involved multiple stakeholders, including ensuring the Acute Provider Collaborative within the North East London ICS had the option to work through the clustering provision of the new Managed Staff Banks framework agreement, where trusts are listed as a beneficiary allowing them to utilise the same contract.
“Before the start of the project, we had concerns around the size and complexity of the tendering exercise. These concerns included emerging from a post-pandemic recovery world, industrial action, backlogs, financial pressures and resource capacity.” – John Simon, Head of Temporary Workforce and North East London ICS Lead, Barts Health NHS Trust
The primary objectives of the project were to provide improved efficiency and cost savings. Additionally, it was crucial that the project provided a seamless transition from the existing agreement to the new contract in order to maintain the continuity of the trust’s critical temporary staffing services.
Outcome
Utilising the NHS Workforce Alliance’s Managed Staff Banks framework, the Alliance worked collaboratively with Barts NHS Trust to open a new further competition for the provision of their Managed Staff Bank, ensuring an NHS compliant route to market.
Working together with all major stakeholders, the Alliance developed a comprehensive specification to meet all critical aspects of service delivery, including the implementation of a technology solution to book temporary workers both proactively and reactively during peak resource demands.
Robust Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) were set to enable the team at Barts to monitor and track each phase of the contract lifecycle, ensuring that the long-term strategies for the trust’s temporary staffing, procurement and commercial contracts teams are met.
The NHS Workforce Alliance also supported Barts to thoroughly assess social value bids from each of the bidders using the NHS LPP social value tool ensuring the contract is aligned with PPN06/20. By using NHS pan London methodology driven by NHS LPP, the bidder was able to choose commitments which are related and proportionate to the managed staff bank contract. This allowed bidders to be assessed using qualitative and quantitative measurements further enhancing transparency in delivery of social value.
The contract has an initial three-year term with option to extend for further two years. Overall, the project delivered value, operational efficiencies and cost reductions, saving the trust circa £1.5 million (for the initial three-year term).
“Not only was the trust able to complete the exercise on time without any expensive external resource, but the end result will contribute to a substantial saving. We also had no challenges from any competitors on what was a very large and complexity of the tender. The NHS Workforce Alliance acted in true partnership with the trust and delivered impressive results.”
– Daniel Waldron, Group Director of People, Barts Health NHS Trust – Group Director of People
The tender was completed within the required timelines and a smooth implementation process was followed. Despite significant challenges, the project delivered multiple positive outcomes and demonstrated the benefits of a collaborative approach between trusts and the Alliance:
“The collaboration was run with high professionalism, and this resulted in an efficiently run procurement project. All the risks associated with complex procurement projects were mitigated which resulted in a contract that met all the requirements of the stakeholders.”
– Baijoo Haria, Head of Sourcing, Barts Health NHS Trust
“From the very start, this framework was instrumental in co-designing what the new contract would look like, making it fit for the new normal whilst ensuring maximum value and efficiency. The NHS Workforce Alliance team was always involved in ensuring that the project stayed on schedule, was airtight in terms of compliance and gave the NHS the best possible result.”
– John Simon, Head of Temporary Workforce and North East London ICS Lead, Barts Health NHS Trust
If you’re interested in how the NHS Workforce Alliance team can support your organisation in a similar way, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.