Major Regional College draws on procurement expertise for forthcoming major IT overhaul for their supply chain.

Hertford Regional College (HRC) has appointed procurement consultancy Ocurem Ltd, to review, manage, and tender its IT requirements, which are estimated to be up to £30 million pounds and include Cloud Computing, IT hardware, software and e-learning.

The procurement exercise aims to ensure that a single supplier is selected rather than a variety of suppliers, therefore reducing cost and supplier management. This framework for Cloud IT and Infrastructure Services is for the supply of ‘green’ Data Centre services and includes Infrastructure, Platform and Software as a service and expect a wide spectrum of schools, colleges and universities to utilise these services for data storage, on-line learning delivery, web hosting and IT service support.

The framework agreement will allow colleges and other publicly funded institutions from all over the UK and Europe to buy from the successful supplier once the final volume discounted pricing structures have been agreed. HRC and Ocurem are welcoming potential suppliers who form part of a consortium.

The deadline for the potential suppliers to request the tender pack is 26th January 2011. Potential suppliers can request details by emailing HRC@ocurem.com The final deadline for PQQ responses is 1st February 2011 @ 4pm.

The procurement exercise being managed by Ocurem is made up of 2 parts; The Pre Qualification Questionnaire (PQQ) followed by a successful shortlist of suppliers invited to tender (ITT).The contract is expected to be awarded throughout April.