RM6219

Learning and Training Services DPS

Buyer Guide

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Key information
Category Description

Agreement ID RM6219

Agreement name Learning and Training Services DPS

Agreement duration 4 years, with the option to extend for a further 2 years

Start date 29 October 2021

End date 28 October 2025

There is no maximum agreement length. However, CCS

Maximum contract
recommends that a contract should not exceed 4 years
length
beyond agreement expiry.

Scope of the Provides learning and training services to UK public sector

agreement bodies

Rapid direct award, standard direct award or further

Buying options
competition

Non-Departmental Public Bodies, Devolved

Administrations, Local Authorities, NHS bodies, Charities,
Can be used by Universities, Colleges, Schools, Further Education
providers, Central Government Departments, Arm’s
Length Bodies and Executive Agencies

Contract notice Find a Tender contract notice

[email protected]
Contact details
0345 410 2222

Glossary Procurement terms glossary

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What is a DPS?
A Dynamic Purchasing System (DPS) is a public sector tool which gives buyers
access to a pool of pre-qualified suppliers. A DPS can be divided into Lots, which are
categories of works, services, or goods. Suppliers can be listed on single or multiple
lots within a DPS. Buyers can use the DPS to shortlist suppliers and to run further
competitions between shortlisted candidates.The DPSs CCS currently offers can be
found here.

DPS Suppliers
Suppliers can apply to join the DPS at any point during the agreement time frame.
Ahead of appointment, suppliers will sign up to selection criteria to ensure
compliance with the DPS terms and conditions. You can access the current list of
suppliers by using the DPS Marketplace.

DPS Pricing
DPS pricing is available for standard off-the-shelf requirements within the supplier
prospectuses, which can be accessed through the DPS Platform. All other pricing
will be agreed through the further competition process.

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How to buy
This list shows a step-by-step process of how to buy from this agreement.

Step Instructions

Access agreement
Register on the DPS Marketplace
Check your sourcing tool

Engage with suppliers

Conduct pre-market engagement

Create specification and assessment criteria

Define your requirements
Design an evaluation approach

Create your supplier shortlist

Use filters to shortlist suppliers
Choose rapid or standard award
Using rapid award
Consider doing a capability assessment

Run a competition
Invite suppliers to bid
Review proposals and evaluate suppliers
Request evidence from suppliers
Notify your supplier
Publish your decision

Complete your order contract

Put together and sign your contract

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1. Access agreement
Central Government departments must consider and comply with the Cabinet Office
L&D Spend Control process.

For Central Government departments that subscribe to Civil Service Learning Expert
service, you must contact your individual department L&D team or email
[email protected]. Only if it has been confirmed by CSHR/CSL that
you can access your learning requirement via the DPS, a call-off contract can be put
in place directly by the organisation, as the Contracting Authority.

Wider public sector, third sector and departments that do not fall under Cabinet
Office Spend Control can put in place their own direct Call-Off contracts as the
Contracting Authority.

Before using this agreement, you should ensure that you have applied for, and
received, the necessary budget approval and agreed your procurement strategy with
your internal teams. This includes thinking about what your requirements are, so you
can obtain valuable insight from suppliers during market engagement.

See section ‘Create specification and assessment criteria’ for more information on
what you should be considering when drafting your requirements.

To access this agreement, you need to register on the Dynamic Purchasing System
Marketplace (DPS Marketplace).

Register on the DPS Marketplace

To access the DPS marketplace, follow these five steps. You can also find a
walkthrough of this process on this ‘How to use the DPS system’ video.

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 1. Go to the Supplier Registration page. You can register as a buyer on this
page.

2. Scroll down to find the DPS you are interested in, in this case, the Learning
and Training Services DPS

3. There are several links under the introduction to your chosen DPS. Click on
the link labelled ‘Access as a buyer’.

4. After signing in, read the Buyer Access Agreement. Click on the button
labelled ‘Confirm’ to accept this agreement. This will lead you to the DPS
home page.

5. On the home page, there is a grey box to the right of the screen. Under this
box, click on the button labelled ‘See appointed suppliers’. This will lead you
to the list of suppliers.

2. Engage with suppliers

Pre-market engagement allows you to informally gather information to help shape
your needs. Through these engagements, you can find out about new products and
understand if there are any market developments that could influence requirements.

Conduct pre-market engagement

There are different ways to conduct pre-market engagement. CCS recommends that
you publish a Prior Information Notice (PIN) on Find a Tender. This is useful
especially if you are interested in finding out about suppliers not currently registered
on the DPS. You should include clear instructions for interested suppliers on how to
join the DPS.

You can also engage with suppliers currently on the DPS by emailing them to ask for
information or issuing a formal Request for Information (RFI). You can issue your
RFI through your own procurement platform or using the CCS eSourcing tool.
Remember that you should keep a record of all market engagement activities you
engage in.

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3. Create specification and assessment criteria
A specification is also known as a ‘statement of requirements’. This is a description
of the goods and services the supplier will provide during the contract. To evaluate
how different suppliers will deliver against your specification, you will need to
develop assessment criteria. Assessment criteria are usually divided into quality and
price.

Define your requirements

Defining your requirements or ‘specification’ communicates to your suppliers what

you need, ensuring a successful purchase. You can see CCS’ guide on ‘How to write
a specification’ for general advice.

You should define what type of arrangement you can have with suppliers, for
example:

● A project specific agreement, which is a one-off contract for a specific project,

within a set time period

● A defined term agreement, which is a call-off contract for a fixed period of time
to work on a number of projects.

In the case of the latter, your contract will need to cover the range of services you
will need during the term and should be considered when establishing your
evaluation criteria and weightings.

You must confirm and record your statement of requirements on the DPS before you
start using your filters to shortlist suppliers.

Design an evaluation approach

Once you have defined your requirements, you have to decide how you will evaluate
suppliers against these. To do this, you have to assess the quality and price of each
of their offers.

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Below are some examples of potential criteria within ‘price’ and ‘quality’, and the
weightings you can give to each of these categories. These weightings could vary
depending on whether you are using a further competition or a direct award.

Quality criteria

To evaluate quality, you can consider:

● approach to delivery of the services/methodology, including the strategies,

expertise, methods, materials, and procedures in the proposal

● technical merit, including the competence, skills, and experience of the

management, professional, and technical personnel proposed for the project

● ways of working, including the proposed management systems and methods,

project management tools, software, touchpoints, etc.

● social value (according to PPN 06/20 it should account for a minimum of 10%
of award criteria in central government tenders)

Price criteria

To evaluate price, you can consider:

● time and materials, including all costs over the duration of the contract
including fixed capital costs, variable tender costs and special adjustments
during the contract period, and maintenance and operating costs

Weightings

Evaluation criteria Weighting

Quality Between 0% and 40%

Price Between 60% and 100%

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4. Create your supplier shortlist
Once you have registered on the DPS Marketplace, engaged with suppliers, defined
your requirements, and designed your evaluation approach, you will have to create a
supplier shortlist. To create a supplier shortlist, follow the eight steps below:

1. Go to the DPS Marketplace home screen. There is a grey box on the right of
the screen. Under this box, click on the button ‘Create a new category’

2. Before you go any further, you must select the ‘Rapid’ or ‘Standard’ selection.
To learn more about this, go to the definitions under this list.

3. Select the filters that best fit your requirements. To learn more about the filters
in this category, go to the ‘Categories and Filters’ section.

4. Once you have selected your filters, scroll to the bottom of the page and click
on the button labelled ‘Filter’. The more filters you choose, the fewer suppliers
will appear.

5. When you are happy with your supplier shortlist, scroll to the bottom of the
page and click on the button labelled ‘Save category’. If you are using Rapid,
select a particular supplier to view their provider and training information.

6. Type a name for your shortlist and click on ‘Save category’. This will take you
back to the home screen.

7. On the home screen, click on ‘Export’ to download your shortlist. This exports
a spreadsheet of supplier names and contact details. Use this supplier
shortlist when you come to invite suppliers to bid.

8. Once you have created your supplier shortlist you can either run a desktop
evaluation, a capability assessment or further competition. You can only run a
desktop evaluation if you are using rapid award, described beneath. In all
other cases you should run a capability assessment and/or further
competition.

Please note that category portfolios older than 2 working days are considered
expired due to the continuous onboarding of suppliers onto the DPS. You can update

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your portfolio by clicking on ‘Manage your DPS category portfolio’ and using the
‘Update’ button.

Choose rapid or standard award

You can either use a rapid or standard award procedure to select your supplier,
depending on the training services or software you wish to use. You can buy training
services through:

● Rapid award: this is for standard off the shelf training only, where you can use
the supplier’s prospectus and pricing matrix to make a rapid award to a
supplier who meets your training needs

● Standard direct award or further competition: this is for any other training
needs, where you can export a supplier list and invite the selected suppliers to
take part in a capability assessment and/or a further competition

Using rapid award

If you select rapid award, you will create a supplier shortlist and then either:

● run a desktop evaluation on the DPS

● or export all relevant supplier data for the rapid selection and evaluate offline

The information in the export file will include a list of potential suppliers together with
price information, the supplier prospectus and a short summary confirming general
supplier identity and supplier contact information.

Each supplier prospectus will contain, but is not limited to:

Supplier information, consisting of:

● office locations

● supplier overview

● experience in training

Additional services, consisting of:

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 ● additional services

● flexibility to bespoke

● value for money

● social value

Additional information, consisting of:

● industry recognition

● assurance certification

● security management system and control

Consider doing a capability assessment

If you are not conducting a rapid award, you can use a capability assessment. A
capability assessment is a list of yes or no questions you can send all suppliers to
check that they meet your requirements. Suppliers must be able to answer yes to all
the questions to become shortlisted. See this Capability Assessment template for
more information.

5. Run a competition
If you are not conducting a rapid award, you can use a further competition. Once you
have your supplier shortlist, you can run a competition to choose your selected
supplier.

Invite suppliers to bid

Before you invite your suppliers to bid, prepare all the documents you need,
including:

● Invitation to Tender (ITT): a formal procurement document which invites

suppliers to bid for the contract. This document should include a timetable,
instructions for suppliers on submitting a bid or asking clarification questions,

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 your specification or statement of requirements, and your assessment or
award criteria.

● Draft contract: a draft version of the ‘call-off order form’. See section on
Complete your contract for more information on how to do this.

Once you have prepared these documents, invite suppliers to bid. You can do this by
sending them an email, or through your chosen sourcing platform. This can be the
procurement platform used by your organisation, or CCS’s eSourcing tool.

Once you have invited suppliers, you should leave sufficient time for them to respond
to your further competition. Three weeks is generally considered the minimum
timescale for a supplier to respond to an ITT. You should also indicate when and
how suppliers can ask clarification questions. Answers to these questions must be
shared to all suppliers invited to tender.

When using CCS agreements, you are not required to UK procurement policies
regarding the publishing of contract opportunities. However, it is still good practice to
do so. This especially the case when using a DPS, as it can lead to new suppliers
joining the DPS. For more information on publication obligations depending on
contract value, see the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 transparency
requirements

Review proposals and evaluate suppliers

After the deadline for submissions has passed, you can evaluate supplier responses.
To do this, you have to score supplier responses against your assessment criteria.
CCS recommends that you use three people to evaluate proposals. You should
maintain a full document trail of the results and final award decision.

After reviewing written proposals, you might choose to invite suppliers with the best
written response to present their proposal. This can allow supplies to present more
detailed proposals, adn to answer specific questions you may have regarding their
written response.

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You should only invite suppliers who have a realistic chance of winning the
competition to the presentation. This evaluation panel should prepare the meeting
structure and share this with shortlisted suppliers so that they can prepare.

Evaluation of presentations should form part of your overall quality score, though you
should not repeat the questions asked in the initial written stage. The weighting for
the presentation must be published in the initial call for competition.

Request evidence from suppliers

Before you award the contract to the winning supplier, you should conduct
compliance checks. As part of this, you can ask the winning supplier for the evidence
they submitted in order to join the DPS. This could include customer references,
contact examples, or insurance certificates. To carry out a compliance check, follow
these steps:

1. Go to the DPS system homepage and find the supplier shortlist you used.
Click on ‘View suppliers’.

2. Find the winning supplier and click on ‘View evidence’. If the supplier hasn’t
yet uploaded evidence, click on ‘Request evidence’.

3. The supplier will then be sent a notification to grant you access to see the
evidence within the DPS system. It is recommended to allow 2 days for non-
complex projects, and more time for complex projects.

Notify your supplier

You should be able to identify a winner from scoring suppliers at the evaluation
stage. Once you have identified a winner, you should notify them through your
sourcing platform or by email. Though you don’t have to notify and provide feedback
to other participating suppliers, CCS considers it best practice to do so.

For high value contracts, a standstill period of 10 days is recommended. This gives
unsuccessful suppliers an opportunity to consider feedback, request information, or

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call for a review of the award decision. Once this has passed, you can begin your
contract with the winning supplier.

Publish your decision

Once you have awarded the contract, you should follow the Public Contracts
Regulations 2015 transparency requirements, and publish the award on Contracts
Finder. According to these regulations, you are required to publish:

● the full company name of the winning contractor

● the date on which the contract was entered into, known as the award date

● the total value of the contract in pounds sterling

● an indication of whether the contractor is an SME or a VCSE

If you have already published the opportunity on Contracts Finder, you should
update it to include the award decision. For sub-central contracting authorities,
information must be published on Contracts Finder within 90 calendar days of the
contract award date. For central government authorities, information must be
published on Contracts Finder within 30 calendar days of the contract award date.

You can also choose to update contract award notices in groups on a quarterly
basis. This means you can send a single notice setting out the volumes you have
procured under each framework or DPS. This notice should be sent to Contracts
Finder within 30 calendar days of the end of each quarter.

6. Complete your Contract

When buying through CCS agreements, you have to put together and sign a contract
with the supplier, this is called the ‘order contract’. CCS uses a specific contract
structure called the Public Sector Contract.

The order contract is a document that governs the purchase and delivery of the
services. It is formed of the order form (signed by both parties) plus any applicable
schedules. See below instructions on how to put together and sign your contract.

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Put together and sign your contract

You can download all the contractual documents you need on the DPS Marketplace.
Follow the steps below to guide you through the process of putting together and
signing your contract:

1. Download the order form. This document is the basis of your contract. Note
that this document changes from one agreement to another, so make sure
you check you are using the correct one.

2. Fill in the sections where input is required from the buyer.

3. You should be aware that there are certain terms and conditions agreed on by
CCS and the suppliers when the agreement was created. These are found in
the core terms, and the DPS schedules. These apply to every purchase made
through the agreement and can only be changed through the introduction of
‘special terms’. See step 6 for information on doing this.

4. As well as the core terms and DPS schedules, there are other terms and
conditions that might be relevant to your contract. These are the joint
schedules and order schedules. Some of these schedules are mandatory and
others are optional. Optional schedules will be highlighted in yellow and in
square brackets on the order form. You will have to delete those which you
don’t want to include in your contract.

5. Check whether you need to fill in any information on the schedules you have
selected. This will be indicated in each of the schedules.

6. When you have selected your schedules, you have to decide whether you
want to add any ‘special terms’. These are terms and conditions you want to
include but are not covered by available schedules.

7. Publish your draft contract together with your Invitation to Tender (ITT).

Once you have chosen your supplier, you need to finish and sign the contract. Your
supplier can ask to negotiate the optional schedules and special terms in the
contract. Once you have made any changes, send the contract to your supplier. Your

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supplier should be the first to sign the contract. After this, you can sign the final
contract.

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Filter categories
In this DPS, there are two headline filters, and additional training filters, which you
can use to shortlist suppliers. The headline filters are Learning Categories and
Service Types. Learning Categories consist of:

● business skills

● coaching and mentoring

● health and safety

● digital, data and technology

● financial services

● languages

● leadership and management

● legal and compliance

● Learning Management System (LMS) software

● LMS design, delivery and content

● NHS clinical

● NHS non-clinical

● NHS Continuous Professional Development (CPD)

● project and programme management

● specialist / niche training

● wellbeing

Service Types consist of:

● Standard off the Shelf training: Ad hoc off-the-shelf training courses and
professional qualifications. These are only provided by the training provider
(no aggregators/sub-contractors)

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 ● Bespoke training: Sourcing specialist or tailored training courses and small-
scale ad hoc learning needs across all subject areas. This includes the design
and provision of specialist/niche training programmes

● Learning Technologies: The design, build, supply, and development of

learning technologies. This includes, but is not limited to new Learning
Management

● Systems/Learning Experience Platforms; the integration of existing Learning

Systems/Platforms

● Education Services: This provision is for public sector funded programmes

targeted to provide skills to the general public (those in education,
unemployed, or in full time employment

You can also filter suppliers by location and provision methods including:

● E-learning

● virtual instructor-led

● face to face

● hybrid/blended

● classroom

● workplace

● virtual

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