Hot Meal Provision - School Meals Scheme

AI-generated analysis of the documents. Check the official notice and any amendments for current submission details.

1. At a glance

2. Scope of Work

This tender seeks a contractor to provide hot meals under the Department of Social Protection's School Meals Scheme to St. Vincent's Convent Primary School. The estimated contract value is €323,232 over an unspecified term, with an estimated annual value of €107,744. The school operates for 182 days per year, and the contractor must provide service on each of these days, barring exceptional circumstances.

The contractor's core responsibility is the preparation and delivery of hot meals. The tender documents specify three potential service delivery models:

• Meals Pre-Prepared Off-site and Delivered
• Meals Pre-Prepared Off-Site and Heated in the school
• Meals Fully Prepared On-Site

Tenderers must select and confirm the service delivery model for which they are submitting their proposal.

Key activities and requirements include:

• Food Ordering System: Tenderers must detail their proposed system (app, website, email) for meal ordering and adjustments, including ordering deadlines. Imagery of the ordering system is required.
• Food Service: This encompasses distribution to students, individual packaging, labelling, and the provision of cutlery and napkins. Imagery of individual packaging and labelling is required.
• Food Plan: A comprehensive food plan is required, offering fresh, healthy, and nutritious options that can be varied. It must accommodate dietary needs including intolerances, allergies, and religious observances (lactose-free, gluten-free, vegetarian, vegan, halal). Options must be available daily, weekly, and seasonally.
• Food Standards: Tenderers must outline their approach to maintaining food quality, freshness, and nutritional content. This includes mitigating menu fatigue, ensuring correct food temperatures from delivery to serving, and preventing cross-contamination for allergies and intolerances.
• Contract Management: A Key Account Manager (KAM) with proven experience in similar roles must be assigned. CVs for the KAM and a nominated backup KAM (max 2 A4 pages each) are mandatory.
• Complaint/Incident Management: A clear process for managing and resolving complaints and incidents, including product recalls, food contamination, customer complaints, medical incidents (foodborne illness, allergies), and food quality issues, is required.
• Staff Resourcing: The contractor must demonstrate how they will ensure continuous resourcing with skilled, knowledgeable, and trained staff. This includes plans for resource management, continuity of service, staff training, and succession planning.
• Green Procurement and Sustainability:
• Waste Minimisation: Detail approaches to waste prevention, with a focus on food waste reduction, aligning with national targets.
• Packaging: Use environmentally friendly, recyclable, compostable, or biodegradable packaging, reducing plastics and non-recyclable materials.
• Waste Management Plan: Outline a plan for waste collection, including pest control for waste, storage, preparation, and service areas.
• Sustainable Purchasing Policy: Describe how purchasing policies contribute to environmental and social sustainability, favouring local, seasonal produce, minimising waste in purchasing decisions, and ordering optimum quantities.
• Organic Ingredients: A minimum of 10% of food by value must be certified organic in specified categories (cereals, beef, lamb, pork, poultry, fish, vegetables, dairy) where possible.

The contract is for the provision of hot meals, with a specified fee of €3.20 (VAT exempt) per student per day.

3. Background & buyer context

This procurement is for St. Vincent's Convent Primary School in Cork, operating under the Department of Social Protection's School Meals Scheme. The scheme aims to provide nutritional support to primary school children. The tender is being issued now to secure a service provider for the delivery of hot meals to the school's students. The estimated contract value is below the EU threshold of €750,000, indicating a national procurement procedure. The school is located at St Marys Road, Cork. The tender documents do not explicitly mention an incumbent provider or a specific programme driving this procurement beyond the existing School Meals Scheme.

4. Eligibility & selection criteria

Tenderers must meet the following mandatory criteria to be considered:

• Turnover requirement: A minimum average annual turnover of €107,744 for each of the three financial years immediately preceding the tender publication date. For consortia, this can be a combined turnover.
• Insurance:
• Employer’s Liability: €13 million limit per claim/series of claims.
• Public Liability: €6.5 million limit per claim/series of claims.
• Product Liability: €6.5 million limit per claim and in aggregate.
• Motor Cover: Minimum €1.3 million for third-party property damage per accident.
• Crime Insurance: €100,000 per claim.
• Cyber Liability: €1 million per claim and in aggregate per policy year.
• Professional Indemnity: €6.5 million limit per claim/series of claims (only relevant for Service Delivery Models 2, 3, or 4 involving fit-out works).
• Certifications:
• Registered as a Food Business Operator (FBO) with the HSE, local authority, or DAFM.
• Past experience:
• Details of at least three previous contract examples (public or private sector) within the last three years.
• These contracts must be for hot catering services of a similar nature, scale, and value.
• Collectively, the examples must demonstrate an average of 60% or more of the number of meals required in this tender.
• Written references from three named referees for each contract example are required.
• Personnel:
• Key Account Manager (KAM): Must hold a Food Safety/HACCP qualification and have a minimum of 2 years' experience in a similar role.
• Geographic / facility constraints: Not specified for this tender.

5. Award criteria & scoring

The contract will be awarded based on a combination of qualitative and price criteria, following the MEAT (Most Economically Advantageous Tender) principle. 1,000 marks are available for qualitative assessment.

Criterion Weight (%) Sub-criteria / Pass Thresholds