VOLUNTARY EX ANTE TRANSPARENCY NOTICE

Section I: Contracting Authority/Entity

I.1)

Name, Address and Contact Point(s)

I.2)

Type of contracting Authority and Main Activity or Activities

Other (Please specify): Higher Education Institution

General public services Defence Public order and safety Environment Economic and financial affairs Health Housing and community amenities Social protection Recreation, culture and religion Education

Section II: Object of the Contract

II.1)

Description

II.1.1)

Title attributed to the contract by the contracting authority

Contensis Content Management System (CMS) Hosting and Support

II.1.2(a))

Type of works contract

II.1.2(b))

Type of supplies contract

II.1.2(c))

Type of service contract

II.1.2)

Main site or location of works, place of delivery or performance

II.1.3)

This notice involves a framework agreement

II.1.4)

Short description of the contract or purchase(s)

Digital solutions at King’s College London use Contensis content management system sourced through Zengenti to build, manage and maintain three major websites for the College. These are:

— the main College website: www.kcl.ac.uk

— the intranet: http://internal.kcl.ac.uk

— conference advertising site: www.kingsvenues.com

These sites currently have around 500 000 live content elements being managed by around 1 200 content editors.

Previously, the Contensis Live infrastructure was hosted internally on a mix of servers nearing end of support life. There was a large technical debt (in terms of lack of internal knowledge and documentation of the current configuration) within the support, platforms and infrastructure teams which restricted the provision of problem-solving and significantly reduced any ‘service improvement’ opportunities.

II.1.5)

Common Procurement Vocabulary (CPV)

II.1.6)

Contract covered by the government procurement agreement (GPA)

II.2)

Total final value of the contract(s)

II.2.1)

Total final value of the contract(s)

Section IV: Procedure

IV.1)

Type of procedure

IV.1.1)

Type of procedure

IV.2)

Award criteria

IV.2.1)

Award criteria

IV.2.2)

An electronic auction has been used

IV.3)

Administrative information

IV.3.1)

File reference number attributed by the contracting authority

IV.3.2)

Previous publication(s) concerning the same contract

Other previous publications

Section V: Award of contract

Contract No:

 Lot Number: 

 Title: 

V.1)

Date of contract award decision:

V.2)

Numbers of offers received:

V.3)

Name and address of economic operator to whom the contract has been awarded

V.4)

Information on value of contract

V.5)

The contract is likely to be subcontracted

Short description of the value/proportion of the contract to be subcontracted

Section VI: Complementary Information

VI.1)

Contract related to a project and/or programme financed by community funds?

VI.2)

Additional Information

VI.3)

Procedures for appeal

VI.3.1)

Body responsible for appeal procedures

Body responsible for mediation procedures

VI.3.2)

Lodging of appeals

VI.3.3)

Service from which information about the lodging of appeals may be obtained

VI.4)

Dispatch date of this Notice

Annex D1 – General procurement

Justification for the award of the contract without prior publication of a contract notice in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU)
Directive 2004/18/EC

a) No tenders or no appropriate tenders in response to:

	Open procedure
	Restricted procedure

b) The products involved are manufactured purely for the purpose of research, experiment, study or development under the conditions stated in the Directive (for supplies only).

c) The works/goods/services can be provided only by a particular tenderer for reasons that are:

	Technical
	Artistic
	Connected with the protection of exclusive rights

d) Extreme urgency brought about by events unforeseeable by the contracting authority and in accordance with the strict conditions stated in the Directive.

e) Additional works/deliveries/services are ordered under the strict conditions stated in the Directive.

f) New works/services, constituting a repetition of existing works/services and ordered in accordance with the strict conditions stated in the Directive.

g)Service contract awarded to the successful candidate or one of them after a design contest.

h) For supplies quoted and purchased on a commodity market.

i) For the purchase of supplies on particularly advantageous terms:

	from a supplier which is definitely winding up its business activities
	from the receivers or liquidators of a bankruptcy, an arrangement with creditors or a similar procedure.

j) All tenders submitted in reply to an open procedure, a restricted procedure or competitive dialogue were irregular or unacceptable. Only those tenderers were included in the negotiations which have satisfied the qualitative selection criteria.

Other justification for the award of the contract without prior publication of a contract notice in the OJEU:

k) The contract has as its object services listed in Annex B of Directive 2004/18/EC or in Annex XVII B of Directive 2004/17/EC

l) The contract falls outside the scope of application of the relevant directive.

In addition to the box(es) ticked above please explain in a clear and comprehensive manner why the award of the contract without prior publication of a contract notice in the OJEU is lawful, stating in any case the relevant facts, and, as appropriate, the conclusions of law in accordance with the articles in the relevant Directive (500 words maximum):

The website is a key tool in communication information and recruitment details to prospective students, researchers and the wider academic community. The intranet is a key tool in communicating with current staff and students with both day-to-day details but also in the event of a major emergency. Because of this there is a key requirement that the hosting solution can cope with standard demand but also have a fully operational second site that can be activated in the event of a problem.The current situation is unique due to the level of support offered. Zengenti Limited currently provide the following support that would be almost impossible to re-produce:

— full application support of the CMS that they have written and develop. This support extends in to theseamless integration with high-grade hosting. This uses high-grade industry-leading components and ISO27001 certified. They supply redundant Tier 1 resilient connectivity housed in core Internet Exchanges. 3 / 4

— they also supply a full back-up and DR (Disaster Recovery) capabilities [the DR solution is managed so it is always with 15 minutes behind live] and provides automated fail over for all hardware components. Hosting with an independent third party or internally within King’s infrastructure would delay support, reduce capability and slow down development of the websites.

The above justification focuses on two main justification elements:

— compatibility and technical capability: the application is developed and supported through Zengenti Limited,hence the cloud model supported through the same company ensures seamless replication of the technical capabilities and functionality without the need for an extra layer of management and risk if the hosting element is to be sourced through an alternative vendor,

— significant resource investment: the ‘Web Hosting’ project that King’s College London embarked upon in 2016 invested significant internal resource which altogether accounted to a total project cost of 226 849,00 GBP. In addition, a compliant competitive exercise (KCL09-0128) was conducted via a Restricted procedure including a pre-qualification and an ‘Invitation to tender’ (ITT) stage in 2010 which was awarded to Genetics limited (now renamed to Zengenti Limited). The above justification serves as the reasoning behind King's College London decision to submit a Voluntary transparency notice.