Tender

Cairn Housing tenders quantity surveying services across five lots

By Staff Writer  |  06-09-2026

Cairn Housing Association has opened tenders for a framework of employer's agent and quantity surveying services for its property services team. Five lots are advertised, tenders close at midday on 2 October 2026, and the term is three years with two further years available one at a time. No value appears on the notice.

Four services carried in one appointment

The short description records what the association is buying.

We are looking to appoint a quantity surveying practice to carry out employers agent and quantity surveying services for our property services team for a period of 3 years plus 1 plus 1.

Cairn Housing Association, contract notice

Each of the five lot descriptions widens that. The services named at lot level are employer's agent, contract administration, adviser on construction design and management, and quantity surveying, all on an ad hoc basis. Four roles are therefore being bought from one appointed practice on each lot rather than let separately.

The combination repays attention from anyone preparing a bid. An employer's agent acts for the employer, most often under a design and build contract, while a contract administrator carries certifying functions that have to be exercised fairly between the parties. Holding both, together with the quantity surveying and the duties of the adviser on construction design and management, places a wide span of work with one practice on each lot. The notice sets out no allocation of those duties between projects and no protocol for the point at which one role gives way to another.

Five geographical lots, a ceiling of three, and how the marks fall

The lots are identified on the notice by number alone. Each title reads as a pointer to a document rather than a description: lot 1 refer to appendix 7, and so on through lot 5. The appendix is titled Appendix 7 Geographical Lots, and a second revision of it was uploaded on 4 September 2026 at 18:20, recorded on the notice as a replaced file. Access to the procurement documents is restricted, so the geography that separates the five lots is not on the public part of the record.

The delivery locations attached to the notice are all Scotland, Aberdeen and North East, Edinburgh and Lothians, and Glasgow and Strathclyde. Tenders may be submitted for all lots, and the association is based at Bellevue House on Hopetoun Street in Edinburgh.

The framework is recorded as an agreement with several operators, with an envisaged maximum of three participants. The notice states that figure once, in the procedure section, and does not say whether three is the ceiling for each lot or for the framework as a whole.

Every lot carries the same award criteria. Quality accounts for seventy of the hundred marks, divided into relevant examples at twenty, technical facilities and measures for ensuring quality at twenty, educational and professional qualifications at twenty, and environmental management measures at ten. Price accounts for the remaining thirty.

A split on those proportions, with a fifth of the marks on qualifications and a further fifth on quality assurance arrangements, puts more weight on what a practice can evidence about itself than on the rates it offers. Variants will not be accepted and no options are recorded against any lot.

Term, dates and the documents

The duration is recorded as thirty six months, subject to renewal, with the renewals described as plus one year plus one year. The association gives its own reason for a term capable of running beyond four years.

Framework agreement is 3 years, we have allowed for plus 1 plus 1 to allow for business demand and if we have a good working relationship with the appointed practices.

Cairn Housing Association, contract notice

Tenders must be received by 12:00 on 2 October 2026 and are opened at 13:00 the same day. Submission is electronic through the register's postbox facility, and a single procurement document has to be completed online as part of the response. An invitation to tender and seven appendices accompany the notice. The notice was dispatched on 4 September 2026, the procedure is open, the procurement is recorded as not recurrent, and the review body is Edinburgh Sheriff Court.

No value appears anywhere on the record: not as an estimated total, not lot by lot, and not as a ceiling for the framework. For a practice deciding whether to bid, that leaves the scale of the work to be judged from the association's own stock and development programme rather than from anything the notice publishes, and it leaves the priced part of the submission to be built without a published quantum to set rates against.