Specialist legal team advises on complex £120m public shared services contract
First single shared services agreement of its kind in England
Acting on behalf of Surrey County Council, a team of specialist lawyers from Michelmores’ Technology, Media & Communications (TMC) Group has advised on a contract to provide a fully managed and integrated voice and data communications solution for a range of public, and possibly voluntary, sector organisations in Surrey, Berkshire and the immediate proximity.
The contract, which was awarded to BT, is the first single shared services agreement of its kind in England and requires the supplier to act as a systems integrator and to regularly compete services over the life of the contract. It has a potential value of up to £120 million.
The contract will provide for a managed wide-area network, local area networks, IP voice services, and other managed IP services. The programme is known as UNICORN (Unified Communities over Regional Network) and once implemented UNICORN will be available to a wide range of public sector bodies and voluntary sector organisations within Surrey, Berkshire and the immediate proximity, such as police services, fire and rescue, universities and other educational organisations, local authorities, libraries, traffic control, ambulance services, medical facilities and charities.
In addition to providing the UNICORN Services, BT will be required to demonstrate that it can sustainably deliver (during the life of the contract) best value in this fast moving and ever developing telecoms market. UNICORN will also seek to interface with Surrey's Superfast Broadband programme, which will make Surrey the best connected county in the UK.
Partner and head of the TMC group, Rehman Noormohamed, led the Michelmores team, which included partner Jason Phelps and senior solicitor Nathaniel Lane, on this highly complex and ground breaking shared service integrator procurement project.
Rehman said: “Given that a number of existing voice and data communications network contracts were coming to an end in similar time frames, there was an opportunity for Surrey County Council together with Surrey Districts and Boroughs and Berkshire Unitary Authorities to review and explore the most efficient, effective, sustainable and economic way to replace existing services with leading edge voice, data, telephony and technology services.
"Essentially, UNICORN is a partnership of public and voluntary sector organisations that have sought to aggregate demand and purchase networking services collaboratively. The partnership lays the foundations for much closer public service integration and will provide participating authorities with access to a better quality and range of services, economies of scale, business benefits and overall cost savings.
“We were appointed to specifically support the programme in two key areas – firstly, to ensure the delivery of a successful and legally compliant procurement process; and secondly, to design, develop and draft a contract that identifies, controls, mitigates and effectively protects our client and participating authorities from contractual and regulatory risk.
"To achieve this, we have worked very closely with the UNICORN programme team, Surrey County Council and representatives of the participating authorities to really understand their operational, technical, financial and commercial needs, risks and drivers.
“This, as you can imagine, made drawing up the contract highly challenging given the complexities involved with this programme. I must commend my team and the programme team for their expertise in developing what I’m sure will be a model to follow as more public bodies go down the shared services route.”
Nick Roberts, Surrey County Council’s IMT Customers Services and Partnerships Group Manager and Programme Director added: “We needed to create a model of procurement for UNICORN that was very different to traditional methods and so needed a different type of contract to support it. We carefully navigated European legislation to deliver a robust and fit for purpose contractual relationship with the supplier to enable them to act as an independent systems integrator on behalf of a wide range of participating authorities.
“Rem and his team at Michelmores developed an innovative contract that included enabling a three-way relationship between Surrey County Council, Partners and the supplier. The timescales at times were incredibly tight yet the Michelmores team worked tirelessly to deliver against pressing deadlines.”
