Provision of hot meals under the 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 to students under the School Meals Scheme at Scoil Eoin Phóil 11 Naofa. The contract duration is a maximum of three years. The school operates for 182 days per year, and the successful tenderer must provide service on each of these days.

The scope of work includes the provision of catering services, encompassing the ordering, preparation, and delivery of hot meals. Tenderers must specify their chosen service delivery method from the following options:

• Meals Pre-Prepared Off-site and Delivered Ready-to-Serve
• Meals Pre-Prepared Off-Site and Heated in the School
• Meals Fully Prepared On-Site

Key activities and requirements include:

• Meal Provision: Supplying hot meals to students on each of the 182 school days annually.
• Ordering System: Implementing a system (app, website, email) for meal ordering and adjustments, with defined ordering and amendment time limits. Imagery of the ordering system must be provided.
• Food Service: Managing the distribution of meals to students, including individual packaging, labelling, and provision of cutlery and napkins. Imagery of individual packaging and labelling is required.
• Food Plan: Developing and maintaining a food plan that offers fresh, healthy, and nutritious options, with variety and adaptability over the contract term. The plan must accommodate dietary requirements including lactose-free, gluten-free, vegetarian, vegan, and halal options, and cater to students with food intolerances, allergies, and religious observances. Options must be available daily, weekly, and seasonally.
• Food Standards: Ensuring high standards of food quality, freshness, and preservation of nutritional content. This includes managing food temperatures in compliance with legislation from delivery to serving, and mitigating menu fatigue.
• Cross-Contamination Prevention: Implementing measures to avoid food cross-contamination, particularly for allergies and intolerances.
• Contract Management: Assigning a Key Account Manager (KAM) with proven experience in similar roles to oversee service delivery. A CV for the KAM and a nominated backup KAM (maximum 2 A4 pages each) must be submitted.
• Complaint/Incident Management: Establishing 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.
• Staff Resourcing: Ensuring continuous resourcing with skilled, knowledgeable, and trained staff. This includes managing resources for quality and continuity, providing ongoing relevant training, and implementing succession planning for resource replacement.
• Green Procurement and Sustainability: Detailing approaches to waste minimisation (especially food waste), using environmentally friendly packaging, reducing plastics, and implementing a sustainable purchasing policy favouring local suppliers and seasonal produce.
• Waste Management: Providing a waste management plan for the school campus, including daily collection of food waste and pest control measures for waste, storage, preparation, and service areas.

The estimated contract value is €312,748.80, calculated based on a hot meal rate of €3.20, 179 meals per student (this figure appears to be a typo in the source document, likely intended to be 182 school days), and 3 years.

3. Background & buyer context

This procurement is conducted by Scoil Eoin Phóil 11 Naofa, located in Ballyroan, Co. Laois. The tender is for the provision of hot meals under the Department of Social Protection’s School Meals Scheme. The estimated contract value falls below the €750,000 EU procurement threshold, leading to the use of an Open Procedure. The tender documents indicate a maximum contract length of three years. The school operates 182 days per year, and the service must be provided on each of these days.

4. Eligibility & selection criteria

Tenderers must meet the following mandatory requirements to be considered:

• Turnover requirement: A minimum average annual turnover of €104,249.60 for each of the three financial years immediately preceding the tender publication date. If submitting as a consortium, this requirement can be met by the combined turnover of members. Audited financial statements with an unqualified audit report are required.
• Insurance: The successful tenderer must hold the following insurances for the contract term:
• 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 limit for third-party property damage per accident.
• Crime Insurance: €100,000 per claim.
• Cyber Liability: €1 million per claim and in aggregate.
• Professional Indemnity: €6.5 million limit per claim (only relevant for Service Delivery Models 2, 3, or 4 involving fit-out works). A €2.5 million limit applies where advice only is given.
• Certifications: Tenderers must be registered as Food Business Operators (FBOs) with the relevant competent authority (HSE, local authority, or DAFM). A copy of the acknowledgement of notification or approval certificate is required.
• Past experience: Tenderers must demonstrate experience by providing details of at least three previous contract examples (public or private sector) within the last three years. These contracts must collectively demonstrate successful delivery of hot catering services of a similar nature, scale, and value to this tender. The average number of meals produced/delivered per day across these examples must be 60% or more of the number of meals required in this competition. Written references from three referees for these contracts are mandatory.
• Personnel: A Key Account Manager (KAM) must be nominated, with a CV (max 2 A4 pages) detailing qualifications and relevant experience. A nominated backup KAM CV is also required. KAMs must hold a Food Safety/HACCP qualification and have a minimum of 2 years of experience in a similar role.
• Geographic / facility constraints: Not specified for this tender.

5. Award criteria & scoring

The evaluation of tenders will be conducted using a combination of qualitative assessment and price. The total available marks for qualitative assessment are 1,000. The price component is not explicitly assigned a mark value but will be considered alongside the qualitative scores.

Criterion Weight (%) Sub-criteria