News story: First contract awarded through LINC platform
B2B and React Engineering used the new platform to submit a proposal for work at the site, and came out on top within four days.
LINC is a new platform developed to help small businesses to win work to support the site’s clean-up mission.
It was launched in autumn 2017 and is already opening the door to work at Sellafield.
Emma-Jayne Gooch, Head of Supply Chain Development & Innovation said:
The first opportunity published in the LINC scheme was a call for proposals on how Sellafield Ltd could achieve accreditation to ISO 44001, ‘collaborative business relationship management systems’.
Through the LINC scheme we asked SMEs to get their heads together and propose how we could identify any gaps against the standard, how the standard could initially be piloted and then ultimately rolled out across the whole business.
We received 5 impressive submissions on 2nd December, a panel assessed the proposals on Monday 6th December and we announced the successful SMEs on Wednesday 8th
That is a speed of turnaround never experienced before by Sellafield Ltd.
The successful proposal was a collaborative offering led by B2B and supported by React Engineering.
John Doyle from B2B said: “We are used to complex and time consuming tendering processes.
“The LINC process, although robust, was very easy and simple to use to register.
“It provided a relatively low cost and simple route to market our services, whilst providing great opportunities to network with other SMEs who would not usually be in our network.”
“There were many SMEs in the LINC list of companies that would have been great partners, but we did our own due diligence for matching up with a good partner and React Engineering came top.”
LINC has been designed to provide Sellafield Ltd with direct access to SMEs in addition to supporting Sellafield Ltd’s contribution to the UK SME agenda.
All SMEs must be pre-registered with LINC before submitting a proposal. Details of registered SMEs will be published periodically to support and encourage further collaboration.
Non-SMEs are free to register with LINC but their participation will be limited to a supporting role only.