Efficiency East Midlands (EEM) Application Support

Efficiency East Midlands, trading as EEM, is a not for profit procurement consortium that establishes framework agreements for its members and for the wider public sector. It was set up by and for social housing providers and local authorities, and that origin still shapes the portfolio: the frameworks are built around the recurring work of maintaining, repairing, improving and building homes and public buildings. Being not for profit means surplus is reinvested or returned to members rather than distributed to shareholders.

EEM establishes its frameworks through advertised, compliant procurements, and members then call off by direct award or further competition according to the rules of each framework. Despite the regional name, the frameworks are generally available beyond the East Midlands, and are usually lotted by region so that local contractors can compete for local work without being placed against national firms. Confirm the current geographic scope and the membership position on EEM's own site before assuming you can access it.

Coverage typically includes new build and refurbishment construction, planned and responsive maintenance, heating, electrical and compliance services, decarbonisation and retrofit, fire safety works, materials and component supply, facilities management, and professional and technical services. The portfolio changes as frameworks expire and are retendered, so treat any list, including this one, as indicative rather than current. Check the live framework list and the forward pipeline on EEM's website and on Find a Tender before planning around a particular framework.

Housing associations, registered providers, arms length management organisations and local authorities are the dominant buyers, with other public bodies such as schools, emergency services and care providers using the frameworks where scope allows. The typical buyer is an asset or property team responsible for a housing stock or a public estate, spending against a planned programme: kitchens and bathrooms, roofing, windows and doors, electrical testing, heating servicing and replacement, damp and mould works, fire door and compartmentation works, and retrofit measures.

That buyer profile drives what wins. Programmes are repetitive, resident facing and politically sensitive. A landlord replacing kitchens in occupied homes cares about appointment reliability, resident communication, complaint handling, operative conduct and making good at least as much as about unit price. Since consumer standards and damp and mould duties tightened, the ability to evidence resident experience and timely remediation has become a genuine evaluation factor rather than a soft one, and it is now routinely tested in the quality questions.

Each framework is procured separately and advertised, so the route is to bid at the tender window for the specific framework and lot you want. Notices appear on Find a Tender and on EEM's own opportunities pages, with documents issued through the e-tendering portal named in the notice. There is no general supplier registration that places you onto frameworks, although registering for opportunity alerts is worth doing so that you see windows early enough to prepare properly.

Lotting is usually by work type and by geography, and choosing well matters far more than bidding widely. Regional lots exist so that a contractor with genuine local coverage can win without competing nationally, and evaluators can tell the difference between a depot in the region and a claim of national reach. Bid the lots where you already have operatives, supervision and materials supply within sensible travelling distance of the work, and decline the rest.

Submissions run selection, then quality and price. Selection tests financial standing against the value of the lot, insurance, exclusion grounds, health and safety and comparable contract examples. Quality covers the delivery model, resource and operative capacity, resident liaison, quality control and defects, health and safety on occupied sites, supply chain and materials, social value, and often a scenario question. Pricing is normally a schedule of rates or a priced schedule of works with defined uplifts and an indexation mechanism.

Resident and occupier experience is where housing frameworks are won and lost. Describe the actual process: how appointments are made and confirmed, what happens when nobody is home, how vulnerable residents are identified and handled, who the resident liaison officer is and what they are empowered to decide, how complaints are logged and escalated, and what your measured satisfaction position currently is. Generic statements about being customer focused score at the bottom of the band every time.

Capacity is tested seriously, because these frameworks feed programmes with real volume. Give numbers: directly employed operatives by trade, subcontract capacity, current committed workload, how quickly you can add resource and from where, and what you would decline. Bidders claiming effectively unlimited capacity are marked down by evaluators who have watched contractors over commit and fail a programme. A credible, bounded answer with a named escalation route scores better than an ambitious one.

Quality control and defects need a process rather than a promise. Set out inspection rates, who inspects and to what standard, what is recorded, how a failed inspection is corrected, how defects are reported after handover, and within what timescale they are resolved. Where the work is safety critical, such as gas, electrical, fire doors or compartmentation, name the competence scheme, the qualification held by the operative, and the audit regime that verifies both remain current.

Social value on these frameworks is expected to land in the communities where the work happens. In practice that means local apprenticeships, local labour and local spend, work with the landlord's own residents, and support for local supply chain firms. Tie each commitment to a measure and a reporting method you will still be able to produce in year three of the framework. Commitments framed nationally, or offered as donations with no delivery route, score poorly and are hard to evidence.