NOE CPC Estates and Facilities Frameworks Application Support

NOE CPC is the NHS North of England Commercial Procurement Collaborative, an NHS hosted collaborative procurement organisation that establishes national framework agreements on behalf of NHS bodies and the wider public sector. Its estates and facilities portfolio covers the practical business of keeping healthcare buildings running: hard facilities management and engineering maintenance, soft facilities management such as cleaning, catering, portering and waste, specialist services, and associated consultancy and compliance support. The individual frameworks, their lots and their expiry dates change regularly, so confirm the current portfolio on the NOE CPC website and on Find a Tender.

Although NOE CPC is hosted within the NHS, its agreements are typically available to NHS trusts and integrated care boards across England and, in many cases, to other public sector bodies. That breadth is set out in the contract notice for each framework, which is the document to check if you need certainty. Because the agreements are NHS led, the specifications, standards and evaluation criteria are written by people who run healthcare estates, and they assume a working knowledge of the healthcare specific technical standards rather than generic commercial facilities management.

Appointment to a framework gives access; work comes through call-off. A trust either runs a further competition among appointed suppliers in the relevant lot and region, or makes a direct award against submitted rates where the framework terms allow. Estates and facilities call-offs are frequently large, multi year and TUPE bearing, which means the transfer of an existing workforce, so the bid effort at call-off stage is substantial. Plan for the framework application to be the first of several competitive processes rather than the last.

The core users are NHS acute, community, mental health and ambulance trusts, integrated care boards, and NHS property and estates bodies. Many agreements extend to other public sector organisations including local authorities, higher and further education, housing providers and blue light services, but that eligibility is defined framework by framework in the contract notice. If you are building a pipeline assumption around non NHS use of an NHS framework, verify it against the notice rather than the marketing summary.

Requirements typically cover planned preventive and reactive maintenance of building services, statutory compliance and testing regimes, critical engineering systems such as medical gas pipeline systems, ventilation and water systems, electrical and mechanical infrastructure, decontamination and specialist plant, alongside soft services including cleaning to the national healthcare cleanliness standards, catering, portering, linen, security and waste including clinical waste. Trusts also buy estates consultancy, surveys, condition data and backlog maintenance programme support, and increasingly decarbonisation and net zero related works tied to national NHS carbon commitments.

Frameworks are competed openly and advertised on Find a Tender, with the tender run through the NOE CPC e-tendering portal. You register on the portal, express interest, and complete a selection stage covering financial standing, exclusion grounds, insurance, health and safety and technical capacity, followed by a quality and pricing stage. Because individual frameworks run on their own cycles, the practical route in is to register on the portal and set Find a Tender alerts so you see each opportunity when it publishes rather than discovering it after award.

The prequalification evidence is demanding and healthcare specific. Expect to need ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 or equivalent management systems, a recognised health and safety prequalification aligned to the Common Assessment Standard, appropriate insurance levels, and evidence of competence against the Health Technical Memorandum series relevant to the lot, for example the memoranda covering medical gas pipeline systems, ventilation, water safety, electrical services and decontamination. Authorised person and competent person arrangements, and the appointing and training regime behind them, are examined closely for critical engineering lots.

Alongside the documents, build the operational case. That means maintenance delivered against SFG20 or an equivalent defined task set, a computer aided facilities management system that produces auditable compliance evidence, engineer and operative numbers by discipline and region, mobilisation experience on TUPE transferring contracts, and your approach to working in live clinical environments with infection prevention and control constraints. Evidence from healthcare estates carries far more weight than equivalent commercial estate experience. If you need help positioning non healthcare experience credibly, call 020 3668 5488.

Healthcare specific competence is the first filter. Evaluators from NHS estates teams look for recognition of the technical memoranda that govern their systems, an authorised person regime with named roles and documented appointment, and understanding of what a ventilation validation, a water safety plan or a medical gas permit to work actually involves. A bidder who describes generic planned maintenance without reference to that framework signals it has not worked in a hospital, and that judgement is usually made in the first paragraph of the response.

Working in a live clinical environment is the second. Marks go to bidders who explain how works are planned around clinical activity, how infection prevention and control requirements are met including HTM compliant hoarding, dust control and permit systems, how staff are inducted and identified on site, how escalation works when a fault affects a critical area, and how safety of patients and visitors is maintained around the works. Answers that describe a method suited to an empty commercial building are marked down regardless of technical quality.

Mobilisation, TUPE and workforce credibility decide the large call-offs and are tested at framework stage. Set out how you consult, the employee liability information process, how you protect service continuity through transfer, how you fill vacancies in a tight labour market, and your position on pay, training and progression for transferring staff. Trusts have experienced failed mobilisations and will probe a plan that assumes a clean transfer. Give realistic timescales, named mobilisation roles and the governance that catches a slipping milestone before go live.

Compliance reporting, social value and net zero complete the picture. Trusts must evidence statutory compliance to their board and to regulators, so the quality, format and accessibility of your compliance data matters as much as the work itself. Social value is scored against the model in force for the competition, and NHS buyers increasingly align it with local anchor institution priorities and with national NHS net zero commitments. Specific, resourced, locally relevant commitments score. Corporate statements with no owner, measure or date do not.