Research Grants Management System

CPV: Industry specific software package

Procedure method

Award procedure without prior publication of a call for competition

Legal basis

CELEX · 32014L0024 Public Contracts Regulations 2015 (Directive 2014/24/EU)

Procurement category

Goods

Notice status

Awarded without competition

Procurement threshold

Unspecified in notice

Regulatory regime

Standard

Commercial structure

Stand-alone contract (no framework)

Competition type

Direct award (no call for competition)

GPA / WTO covered

Yes (GPA)

Recurring procurement

Unspecified in notice

First published

9 Oct 2024, 18:04 BST

Last source update

9 Oct 2024, 18:04 BST

Authority reference

LSHTM-2024-030

FTS notice number

2024/S 000-032492

Classification (CPV)

Industry specific software package

Delivery area

London (UKI31)

Official registry OCID

ocds-h6vhtk-04a747 Find a Tender

Why no open competition

The procurement falls outside the scope of application of the directive

Published justification

Under Clause 32(b) (ii) of Public Contract Regulations 2015: The negotiated procedure without prior publication may be used for works contract, public supply contracts and public service contracts in any of the following cases: - (b) where the works, suppliers or services can be supplied only by a particular economic operator for any of the following reasons: - (ii) competition is absent for technical reasons

Through review of frameworks, soft market testing and informal discussions other institutions, we have concluded that Worktribe is the only proven solution that meets all of LSHTM’s requirements below.

A single SaaS system providing one access point to manage the lifecycle of research projects. Including:

• Pre-award – budgeting, costing and pricing proposals based on TRAC/Full Economic Costing (FEC) (including UKRI and NIHR budget templates), approval workflows and managing applications
• Contracts – supporting contract negotiations with funders, partners and collaborators.
• Due diligence – create and undertake bespoke risk assessment of funders, partners, collaborators and countries. Evaluate the financial and non-financial risks, and provide an overall risk score for the organisations and countries visible across the platform
• Research ethics - management tools including bespoke question sets, workflow allocation rules, full ethics review process including for amendments, ethics committee management, automated generation of outcome letters and reports, configurable workflows for progress reports, end of study reports and safety reports, and risk allocation and visibility
• Post-award – in-built, seamless integration with the Pre-award applications/contracts, project set up, integration with finance system, monitoring of spend against budget, workflow management of budget virements, adjustments, supplements, no-cost extensions and final reconciliation and project close out
• Timesheets – sector-specific tools to record and approve actual staff time on a project and adjustments to costs incurred in compliance with the requirements of research funders and other statutory organisations
• Single SaaS platform data management for the research lifecycle, seamless links between the research lifecycle areas, and to streamline reporting
• has proven integration capability with LSHTM’s new finance system (TechnologyOne’s OneEducation system) and HR system (iTrent) for seamless transition of information for costing project proposals, setting up project codes
• is a mature, tried and tested product that does not require any significant capability development
• Proven track record with HEIs with similar integration requirements and research portfolio complexity
• enables user groups role based access through a user-friendly interface
• is offered off-the-shelf (i.e. no customisation required) delivered within LSHTM’s strict implementation timescales

Limitations of other solutions included:

• Primary capabilities were either as a Current Research Information System (CRIS), an ethics system or a timesheet system. Management of research outputs / institutional repository is outside of scope for this project and not currently of interest.
• No established FEC tool for research and innovation projects.
• No tools to manage the contracts aspect of the requirement.
• Complex, unproven integrations with other systems required to deliver the full requirement.
• Not widely proven by HEIs with similar integration requirements and research portfolio complexity.

Multiple systems would

• be detrimental to the user experience,
• increase training requirements and costs
• impact user adoption.
• Prevent a ‘one stop shop’ to monitor and view the status of a project.
• Increase complexity through integrations between multiple systems as well as implementation time and create additional costs.

• Worktribe LtdAwarded supplier04576074 Engineers House, The Promenade, Clifton Downs, Bristol, South West, BS8 3NB

No document links were published on the notice.