The Education Funding Agency (EFA), an Executive Agency of the Department for Education (DfE) has selected Commerce Decisions’ AWARD® software and services to support the delivery of the £2.4bn, 5-year Priority Schools Building Programme (PSBP).
EFA provides revenue and capital funding for education (for students aged 3 – 19) and supports the delivery of building and maintenance programmes for schools, academies, free schools and sixth-form colleges. In 2012 the EFA invited schools in need of urgent repair to bid for inclusion in the PSBP. The Secretary of State subsequently announced that 261 schools would have their condition needs met through the PSBP, with the majority of the schools being procured using private finance and some using capital funding.
EFA have selected AWARD® to support the PSBP in shortening procurement timescales, reducing costs and ensuring procurement compliance. AWARD® will provide the transparency and information necessary to make informed decisions in a cost effective and timely manner. The programme is highly collaborative with stakeholders and specialist advisors being geographically located across the UK.
Gavin Shepheard, Sales Director for Commerce Decisions, commented, “It is essential that EFA ensures standardisation and consistency across the programme – AWARD® has been proven to support this type of activity on £billions of procurement over the past 12 years.”
David Ogden, EFA Project Director, stated that as the procuring Authority it was essential that bids were evaluated efficiently and that all decisions were fully auditable.
