South West Essex Community Education Trust - ICT Partner

The South West Essex Community Education Trust (SWECET) is a Trust of 6 Academies encompassing c.3,964 pupils.

Our vision is to establish a national reputation for the quality of education we provide

To achieve this, we recognise that we must take accountability for the quality of our teaching, our learning environments and our pupils' development as well as striving to be at the forefront of innovative education.

We provide exceptional training and development opportunities for our colleagues so that they can reach their full potential. It is vital that they have the skills, capacity and expertise needed to not only teach our pupils and provide an outstanding education, but to inspire, support and prepare them for adult life.

We also work to cultivate an exciting, dynamic and pupil-focused learning environment where our teaching is innovative and developmental.

Our pupils' education is our main priority and we want to ensure they enjoy coming to school.

We are constantly challenging ourselves and looking within our schools and beyond our immediate community to understand our needs and identify best practice. It is important to us to stay up to date with the latest research and continue to find new innovative ways of educating our pupils.

The ICT Support at the Trust is currently provided internally by 6 people. The team who deliver a mix of both onsite and remote support.

There is an ICT Manager, Deputy ICT Manager, 3 x Technicians and an apprentice.

The reason for this procurement is that the Trust wishes to consolidate its ICT provision, into a single outsourced service that will deliver infrastructure management, ICT Projects (initially to re-organise the joining up of ICT across the Trust) and supply of equipment. In school, 'adds, moves and changes' will continue to be carried out by SWECET staff.

The companies identified from these shortlisting questions to receive the Stage 2 ITT for the service will then receive a detailed set of requirements. For the purposes of this shortlisting stage bidders should assume that the ITT will include, but not be limited to:

• Strategic advice and direction to the Trust regarding ICT
• Single service desk for all ICT issues - Full time except Bank Holidays
• Single ITSM tooling for both SWECET and the bidders staff to use (6)
• 24 x 7 x 365 remote monitoring and management, including all patching and updates of infrastructure that the supplier is responsible for.
• Responsibility for design, specification, installation and management of all ICT infrastructure
• Re-active onsite staffing bidders to deliver the SLA.
• Supply of goods and services based on an agreed Best Value (BV) approach
• Management of 3rd parties - apart from those which relate to local device based applications
• Relevant monitoring, management, patching and reporting
• Training - Technical and curriculum as necessary
• Expectation that the provider will drive innovation
• Risk registers and infrastructure inventory management
• Collective partnership targets aligned to the Trusts objectives
• Due diligence for future schools

Bidders should note the following;

• The Trust will provide a standard contract as part of the ITT Pack
• There is not expected to be an initial requirement for TUPE