Clarifications
There are 267 clarifications for this DPS
206. Termination for Financial Standing & Termination on Change of Control - CCS may terminate this DPR Agreement if in its opinion. Would we be able to amend this to, 'reasonable opinion'?
CCS can confirm that this is a standard term and will remain unchanged.
Answered
12/09/2018 14:44
205. CCS reserves the right to increase the Management Levy at any time after the first Contract Year. The Management Level will not increase by; 1) more than 0.5% in any one Contract Year, 2) more than 1.5% in total over the DPS period. Please could you confirm the level of Management Services which the supplier will receive in return for the Management Levy? Please can you confirm whether a supplier with a total FTE of c.40 would receive the same level of service, prominence and publicity of other suppliers in the framework?
CCS can confirm the management levy is only payable by suppliers on any work invoiced to customers during the life time of the DPS. Suppliers who are successfully awarded a DPS Agreement will be accessible to Government Departments via the DPS portal for selection based on their individual service requirements and will be invited to a competition.
Answered
12/09/2018 14:43
204. The Supplier agrees to pay CCS the 1% Management Levy on all Charges invoices to Customers throughout the duration of this DPS agreement. Please can you confirm that this levy would be chargeable on the retained revenue to the supplier, net of any of our third party costs?
CCS can confirm 1% levy is payable by the supplier on all Charges invoiced to Customers throughout the duration of this DPS Agreement.
Answered
12/09/2018 14:42
203. CCS (Crown Commercial Services) may decrease the duration of the DPS agreement at any time by giving the Supplier no less than three months written notice. Would this decision be taken unilaterally and completely at CCS's discretion? Would the circumstances of decreasing the duration of the DPS agreement only be in the situation when the supplier breaches the contract or enters insolvency?
CCS can confirm that any termination of a DPS Agreement would be undertaken in accordance with clause 9 - DPS Agreement Termination and Suspension of the DPS Agreement.
Answered
12/09/2018 14:42
202. Do I need Cyber Essentials Plus?
In accordance with clause 7.55 - 7.57 of the DPS Agreement, suppliers are required to have in place cyber essentials basic certification by the award of their first contract under the DPS Agreement. Please refer to the link below for further information re obtgaining cyber essentials certification:
https://www.cyberessentials.ncsc.gov.uk/getting-certified/
Customers will request copies of suppliers certificates prior to award of a contract under the DPS and in accordance with the obligations as set out in the DPS Agreement. If a supplier fails to provide the required certification, this may be deemed as a breach of contract and may result in a contract not being awarded.
Cyber Essentials plus is not required at this stage, however as part of a call for competition, customers may request for suppliers to have cyber essentials plus, which will be specified in the customers project Statement of Works.
Answered
11/09/2018 16:28
201. Is Employers Liability is required for a Limited Company with only one Director/employee who owns over 50% of shares?
CCS can confiirm that if you are a director of a limited company, own at least 50% of the shares, and have no other employees then you are not legally required to purchase employers liability cover.
However if others are employed, including some sub contractors (typically labour only) then Employers Liability insurance is needed.
Answered
11/09/2018 16:28
200. Hi, I am trying to urgently register as a supplier on the RM portal, having already been registered on the CCS site for some time. Before going any further, I am being asked to accept the following: 5) Payment of Management Levy Confirm that you understand and will meet all of the obligations set out for the provision of Payment of Management Levy to CCS. However, I am unable to find any moer information on this levy either on the site or within the bid pack. Can you explain the obligation please which I am being requested to accept? The tele service operator on dialling the phone number was unable to help and suggested I contact yourselves. I would appreciate your assistance as soon as possible to enable my registration as we wish this to be complete by 7th August. With thanks and best wishes,
Good afternoon, for details on the management levy please refer to Paragraph 6 of document 'RM6018 - Research Marketplace DPS Agreement v1.0' within the bid pack.
Answered
03/08/2018 14:23
199. Can I confirm that the Selection Questionnaire just needs to be filled out once by the supplier and held on the system, or at every opportunity bid for by the supplier?
Good afternoon, CCS can confirm that the Selection Questionnaire for RM6018 Research Marketplace is required to be completed once and will be held on Supplier Registration Marketplace for the life time of the Research Marketplace DPS .
Answered
03/08/2018 13:58
197. Under the Contract, you indicate that we will be required to nominate a DPS Manager with overall responsibility for delivering the Services within the DPS Agreement. Given our structure and the range of activities carried out, we would not be able to identify any one person on an institutional level who would be in a position to assume overall DPS management responsibility. Would it be acceptable to you for the DPS Manager to be either a key contact working on specific projects, or more than one person, so that all areas can be covered?
CCS can confirm that suppliers are required to 'nominate a DPS Manager or an equivalent person with overall responsibility for delivering the services within the DPS agreement to ensure a single point of contact for DPS Agreement contract management purposes. The DPS Manager shall liaise with other key contacts within their supplier organisation to ensure visibility of all DPS related projects which will be captured as part of the Supplier Review Meetings in accordance with clause 2.4 of the DPS Agreement.
Answered
22/06/2018 10:06
195. Thanks for your response re my question "In the document Contract Terms Research Marketplace Dynamic Purchasing Systems, clause 23 Supplier Rights to Terminate, there doesn't appear to be any notice period given. Could you please advise what notice would need to be given." However, your reply refers to the notice which the Customer needs to give. We would like to know what notice the Supplier needs to provide, since this is not specified in the section which deals with Supplier termination. If this is the same 3 month period as the Customer, should this be included in the T&Cs at the relevant point?
CCS can confirm that the Supplier Rights to Terminate clause (23.7.7 of the Contract Terms) will be amended to include the following narrative and additional clause:
23.7.9 continued "this Contract shall then terminate on the date specified in the Termination Notice (which shall not be less than twenty (20) Working Days from the date of the issue of the Termination Notice), save that such right of termination shall not apply where the failure to pay is due to the Customer exercising its rights under this Contract including Clause 30 (Retention and Set off).
23.7.10 The Supplier shall not suspend the supply of the Goods and/or Services for failure of the Customer to pay undisputed sums of money (whether in whole or in part)."
All appointed suppliers will be contacted by CCS and asked to insert the additional narrative and clause into their RM6018 - Contract Terms. The document entitled RM6018 Contract Terms will be amended and uploaded to the Bid Pack in the Supplier Registration Service (SRS) for the RM6018 Research Marketplace DPS.
Answered
20/06/2018 11:33
194. Do you have a user guide as to how to use the Research Marketplace DPS you have created please?
Please refer to the DPS Needs document for full instructions. This document forms part of the bid pack which can be located in the bid pack link in the Supplier Registration Service (SRS) for RM6018 - Research Marketplace DPS.
Answered
14/06/2018 09:38
193. With regard to Intellectual Property, could you please confirm which party would own any results arising from any work undertaken. Would they be required to offer a licence to any other party and, if so, on what basis?
Please can you refer to paragraph 20 of the RM6018 - Contract Terms v2.0 (which can be found in the Bid Pack) and which asserts that: The Supplier acknowledges that the Customer retains ownership of Customer Materials and all Intellectual Property Rights in them. This includes any modifications or adaptations of Customer Materials produced by the Supplier in the course of delivering the Project. The Customer hereby grants to the Supplier a non-exclusive license to use the Customer Materials during the applicable Project Term solely for the purposes of delivering the Project.
Answered
07/06/2018 16:57
192. In the document Contract Terms Research Marketplace Dynamic Purchasing Systems, clause 23 Supplier Rights to Terminate, there doesn't appear to be any notice period given. Could you please advise what notice would need to be given.
Please refer to clause 23.1 of the Contract Terms which states - The Customer may, by giving no less than three (3) month's written notice to the Supplier, terminate this Contract without cause.
Answered
07/06/2018 16:30
191. Please can you confirm that no financial information we supply will be made available to the public and it will be used only for the purposes of this tender. If any organisation other than the one we are potentially going to do business with would like to view our financial information we we would like the option to be asked our permission before being granted access to our financial information.
CCS can confirm supplier organisations financial information will not be made available to the public and will only be used for the purpose of the RM6018 Research Marketplace DPS. However, all public organisations (customers) that are registered to the Supplier Registration Service (SRS) will have access to the financial data of all suppliers registered to SRS.
Answered
08/06/2018 15:50
190. We have been asked to join a consortium to bid for four opportunities via the Research Marketplace DPS. That entity is already registered while our application remains as "assessing". Will we be able to bid with this entity while our application awaits registration?
CCS can confirm that you are able to bid as part of the Group of Economic Operators, whilst your own bid is progressing through the Assessing stage.
Answered
07/06/2018 14:48
189. In relation to Attachment 1a Letter of Confirmation (Contract Example). Our supplier is happy to to provide a "to whom it may concern" email confirmation but it is not, however, usually the case that they are presented with a formal 'agreement' for signature and, without taking some form of legal advice, they would be reluctant to do this. Will it be acceptable to provide an email confirmation from the client?
CCS can confirm that Attachment 1a Letter of Confirmation (Contract Example) is not a formal agreement. The request is for signed confirmation of two (2) contract examples to support the research services your organisation has provided to the specified customer. As detailed in the DPS Needs document which forms part of the bid pack at point 32 - Failure to provide two (2) contract examples that meet the requirements as
detailed in Attachment 5 - Response Guidance for Contract Examples, may result in your request to participate being rejected until you are able to meet this requirement.
Answered
06/06/2018 15:28
187. Dear sir or madam. I have a query relating to subcontractors: When recruiting participants for qualitative research, we might use a number of sources, such as specialist fieldwork agencies, or contact recruiters directly. Where using recruiters directly, would these be classified as subcontractors? Given they are work independently and are located across the country, there are potentially hundreds we might use to fulfill the requirements across projects. Therefore should all potential recruiters that might be used at any point across any awarded project be included as subcontractors, or do they fall outside of what is deemed a key subcontractor? Many thanks
CCS can confirm that suppliers are required to provide details of all core organisations of sub-contractor services that they may use, that are known at the time of registration. A list of sub-contractors specific to each project should then be provided during the further competition stage to the customer.
Answered
01/06/2018 11:33
186. Where we are asked to agree to the DPS Terms and Conditions, can you please confirm which document this is? The Bid Pack contains a Contract Terms document, and a DPS Agreement (which is watermarked as a sample, but it's not clear whether we also need to agree to this).
CCS can confirm that suppliers are required to agree to both Contract Terms document and the DPS Agreement.
Answered
29/05/2018 14:09
185. When I try to access SID4gov cabinet office I get a security warning that the website is not configured properly (please see screen shot below).
NQC have transitioned over to https://supplierregistration.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/ in alignment with branding changes, and have supported the re-direction of the old URL (https://sid4gov.cabinetoffice.gov.uk) for a period of twelve months which is now ceased. Please access the Supplier Registration Service on https://supplierregistration.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/
Answered
22/05/2018 10:40
183. In the Research Matrix, if you filter the first column to be only 'Business', then the research methods listed in the third and fourth columns are all Qualitative and Reporting outputs, and there are no options to select for Participant Group or Research location. Can you clarify if there is some dependence across the categories, or is there in fact no dependence; so we could, for example, offer quantitative methods under the 'Business' subject area?
The filter values are all independent of one another, and it is only when a customer (buyer) searches will they return with suppliers who meet the criteria .
Answered
22/05/2018 10:36
