Dear all,
Following recent communications regarding the Bluelight e-sourcing portal, potential grant funding, and your subsequent expression of interest, we are pleased to confirm the below:
Home Office grant funding has been approved and shall cover the first year subscription fee for each FRS that on-boards. Funding will cover the e-tendering system alongside a contracts database. In addition, there is an optional SRM module to allow you to track and monitor KPI’s, and the ability for suppliers to upload documents also – this added extra will not be funded by the grant should you decide to take this functionality. Costs for this can be provided should you wish to consider funding this yourself.
BlueLight Commercial (BLC) have awarded the Contract to In-Tend, and we now have confirmation that Fire shall be progressing with implementing their solution. Those services who were already using the Bluelight Police Database (BLPD) shall be moved over to the new system by October 2022, in preparation for BLPD ceasing in November.
For those services not already using BLPD, the National Procurement Hub have a seat on the Strategic Project board alongside BLC, the supplier, and some Fire/Police colleagues to discuss on-boarding and implementation on behalf of Fire.
There will be an additional working project board, where there are several fire volunteers already included, to input into the configuration of the new system.
It should be noted that in order for contracts data to be ‘transferred’ to the new system, FRS’s shall need to complete a spreadsheet with contract data in a format provided by In-Tend. This will be shared on confirmation of transition, but will depend on what your current solution is.
Training and full support shall be provided by the supplier, and we have also arranged a demonstration of the new system on Monday 1st August at 1pm-3pm. A meeting invite shall follow this email. You also have the opportunity to ask any questions in advance if there are particular elements you would like covered either before, or during the demo. Any questions please get in touch via the contact us form on our website.
This solution will provide for a single repository for contracts information, pipelines and information that services are routinely asked to supply, improving efficiencies in service, and ultimately savings for the sector as a whole, by having one centrally held database.
We look forward to working with you on this exciting new project.