Prior Information Notice (PIN) - Assistive Technologies - Market Engagement Event

Orbit Group manages around 45,000 affordable homes in in the Midlands, East and South East of England, and build around 1,500 new affordable homes every year. Over 100,000 people live in an Orbit home and our aim is to ensure the homes we provide and the places we create are good quality, affordable and safe.

As part of this portfolio, Orbit operate 67 Independent Living/Extra Care schemes, along with a wider group of General Needs & Sheltered Housing. At present these benefits from a range of systems, including:

• A mix of digital and analogue (c60) warden call systems
• A portfolio of 1,000 lifelines

At the core, Orbit is seeking a solution to enable manual or automatic alerts to be raised to both on-site staff and off-site alarm receiving centres, which can be emergency or non-emergency driven.

In addition to this, Orbit are keen to ensure that their solution and future procurement strategy accesses best practice and innovation across the industry. As a result Orbit is keen to seek information on the following through this exercise:

• Solution types and capabilities (such as the inclusion of door entry systems)
• Best practice use and management of the solution through-life
• Integration opportunities with complementary systems (including but not limited to fire systems)

Orbit Group Ltd wish to engage with industry to explore the Assistive Technologies category, including: understanding supplier capability, innovation and best practice. This will help inform the development of Orbit's strategy for future competitions within this space.

Orbit Group Ltd are particularly keen to ensure that all suppliers capable of providing services within this category consider engaging with this opportunity. The market engagement event will aim to provide more information about how interested suppliers can engage with Orbit and participate in any future tendering process, as well as offering an opportunity to ask questions.

This scope of the market engagement event is intended to cover:

• Warden call systems (or similar capabilities) – upgrades and installs
• Warden call systems (or similar capabilities) – servicing and maintenance
• Warden call systems – digital converters
• Digital lifelines
• Further offerings related to Assistive Technologies
• Responses and approach to the upcoming digital switchover

Orbit Group invites all parties interested in attending this event to submit an expression of interest (EOI) in the form of the questionnaire available at the ProContract link by no later than Wednesday 31st May 2023. The response and any questions are to be submitted using the ProContract portal. Please take care to complete all required sections to ensure that we can accommodate your organisation within the event.

Following receipt of a questionnaire, Orbit Group Ltd will issue an invitation to the initial briefing and an interview. Note that responses will be accepted through company accounts only and invitations will not be issued to personal email addresses.

Orbit Group Ltd reserve the right to reject requests to attend should it become necessary due to the level of interest, limitations of available technology, responses that indicate irrelevant solutions (e.g. those not suitable for the Digital Switchover) or other purposes.

Caveat:

In issuing this PIN and engaging with the market, Orbit Group Ltd is not committing to conduct any procurement in relation to any element of the requirements within this category.

Equally, non-participation in this market engagement will not be taken into account in any future procurement activities and will not exclude any organisation from submitting a tender in any future competitions.

It is currently anticipated that any formal procurement relating to the provision of Assistive Technologies categories will be subject to Public Contracts Regulations (PCR) 2015.

The contracting authority considers that this scope may be suitable for economic operators that are small or medium enterprises (SMEs) as well as large enterprises.