Westminster City Council tenders for an e-procurement portal

The portal will help collaborative procurement and provide significant cost benefits

In line with its ongoing shared services agenda, Westminster City Council has tendered for a web-based procurement portal that will display data related to all aspects of procurement activity across London's councils.

Although Westminster is taking on the project, the portal will potentially display information from all London borough councils and public services, including the police and hospitals, and will help pave the way for collaborative procurement across the capital.

According to a spokesperson from the council, the portal will provide significant cost benefits for boroughs and enable suppliers to view potential commercial opportunities.

The contract will be awarded in April and the portal will be launched in June.

The project is being funded by Capital Ambition, a London-based Regional Improvement and Efficiency Partnership that helps local authorities and their partners identify efficiencies, service improvements and other innovations.

The portal will provide:

• A restricted buyer access facility for procurement systems, information repositories, databases, discussion groups, opportunity creation and an online prequalification questionnaire.
• It will also provide a public-facing facility with contract and contract opportunity search and access capability
• A restricted supplier access facility to express an interest in opportunities, complete online qualification questionnaires, market services and products and advertise for sub-contractors.
• An optional e-tendering solution
• Links to an authority's preferred e-solution package
• Links to other regional supplier noticeboards and databases such as the OJEU, Compete For, Supply2Gov, etc
• Links to an authority's preferred e-solution package
• Links to other systems such as eCatalogues, SharePoint, Oracle and SAP among others.

The tender notice listed in the Official Journal of the European Union estimates the value of the three- to four-year deal at between £50,000 and £150,000 for the portal. The framework agreement for the e-tendering solution is worth between £40,000 and £1.5m, according to a report in Kable.