Owner's Engineer Services for Wrigley Head Solar Farm Oldham

The Council sought to appoint an Owner's Engineer (project management resource) to oversee and advise on all technical and regulatory aspects of the building and commissioning of the proposed solar farm at Wrigley Head (Oldham), which has an estimated budget of £1.3m and for which planning permission has been secured. It is anticipated that the Owner's Engineer work will take place across three broad phases:

1. Procurement of contractors - supporting the Council to appoint the necessary contractor(s) to deliver the project*.

2. Construction - providing project management support and technical oversight of the delivery contractor(s), and

3. Handover and post-handover - supporting the Council to

a. Part A - be asset management ready.

b. Part B - procure asset management services and re-tender for O&M services.

(*) The Owner's Engineer must fulfil the role of Principal Designer under the Construction Design & Management Regulations 2015 up until the EPC contractor is appointed.

The Council mandated that the Owner's Engineer's personnel fulfilling the roles of Project Manager, Contracts Manager and Engineer must have at least three years solar farm construction experience. Bidders were also required to demonstrate experience across the above referenced phases through two or three contract examples. Please refer to the procurement documents for other mandatory requirements. Contract terms and conditions were included in the tender pack and were non-negotiable.

The tender was not lotted. The Council planned to appoint a single provider and foresees a single point of contact with accountability for the whole of the service/all phases being the best solution. It also considers there would be operational viability issues in having multiple providers of similar nature.

This was an open tender and bids were welcome from any/all organisations which met the criteria specified in the procurement documents regardless of whether or not they responded to the previous cancelled procurement process (DN655874) and its previous market engagement exercise.