This page will keep you up to date on the progress of the waste contracts procurement for municipal (public) waste. We are procuring two contracts to deal with:
More information
The council deals with around 70,000 tonnes a year of residual waste and organic waste. Over the next 25 years, this will add up to over two million tonnes of waste that we must deal with over the next 25 years.
We currently landfill residual waste; the cost of landfilling is rising and we must act now.
We created a Project Board in 2008; this is a group of councillors and officers to oversee the process. They set the strategy and monitor the progress, making key decisions at appropriate stages.
We began this procurement in summer 2008. We gave potential bidders the option to deal with both wastes, or just to concentrate on residual or organic waste. Over 50 organisations from the UK and EU got in touch after seeing the advert in March 2009.
As the value is so large, £200-300 million over 25 years, we are, by law following EU procurement regulations. We had to choose a route to follow, (restricted procedure or competitive dialogue). These are brief overviews of the two options:
Competitive dialogue:
- Bidders pre-qualify to prove their ability to deliver a contract of this type.
- We dialogue (talk) with the bidders that qualify to discuss how they can achieve our objectives.
- We send bidders an Invitation to Submit Outline Solution (ISOS) to complete, which we evaluate and then de-select a number of bidders.
- More dialogue (talks) take place and we send bidders an Invitation to Submit Detailed Solution (ISDS), which again we evaluate their response and take forward at least two bidders to the next stage.
- We continue dialogue with the bidders to develop their bids, negotiate commercial issues and draft versions of the final contract we would sign with them. Once we have two suitable bids, we close the dialogue and issue an Invitation to Submit Final Tender (ISFT), and they tender competitively and we award the contract to the winning tender.
Restricted procedure:
- Bidders pre-qualify.
- Bidders prepare their bid against a strict specification written by the council.
- We evaluate the bids and award the contract.
We chose the competitive dialogue route as it allows us to dialogue (talk) with bidders which is the best way to deal with a complicated issue like waste treatment. We use consultants to assist through the process. We do not charge bidders to bid for the contract. We need to be sure we achieve the best solution for our budget, the communities of North Lincolnshire, and the environment.
After issuing a pre-qualification questionnaire to the interested organisations, we received 15 responses and invited 13 to the next stage.
History
We invited North Lincs Green Energy (NLGE) and Waste Recycling Group (WRG) to submit a final bid. After evaluating the bids, the Project Board made a recommendation of the winning bid to Len Foster, Cabinet Member.
On 1 March 2010, we received bids for the stage called Invitation to Submit Detailed Solution (ISDS). Len Foster, Cabinet Member approved the result. The ISDS bidders were:
At the stage called Invitation to Submit Outline Solution (ISOS), we reviewed the bids, and the Project Board approved the result in October 2009. The ISOS bidders were:
We currently compost around 20,000 tonnes of organic waste (from resident’s brown bin and household recycling centres) a year. Although composting is useful and avoids landfill, there are other ways of dealing with the waste, which may be beneficial to us.
Current position of the contract
On 28 March 2011, we received three tenders from the invited bidders, which have been evaluated.
We recommended that the Cabinet Member for Highways and Neighbourhoods approve the award of the Contract to Brier Hills Recycling Ltd, who were the winning bidder.
The new contract commenced on 1 July 2011.
History
We began procuring this contract in 2008 alongside the residual waste contract. At the detailed solution stage, the bids showed to be in excess of the council’s affordability criteria, particularly in the early years of the contract. We considered the best option would be to cease the organic waste procurement and procure a short interim treatment contract that would not require a facility to be developed; the Cabinet Member approved this.
We are now using the ‘restricted procedure’ for this contract. Following advertisement, 11 organisations applied to ‘pre-qualify’. After evaluation, we invited four organisations to submit a tender for the contract:
