Contract award

Ambulance trust swaps gas boilers for heat pumps at four stations

By Staff Writer  |  03-09-2026

East Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust has awarded a 170,000 pound contract to strip out gas boilers and install air source heat pumps at four ambulance stations. The contract was concluded on 20 August 2026 with Heb Group Ltd of Sheffield, and the award notice was published at 15:32 on 2 September 2026.

The work is described on the notice as the decarbonisation of existing heating systems, involving the removal of gas boilers and the installation of air source heat pumps at four ambulance stations. The main classification is heat pumps and the type of contract is recorded as supplies. Place of performance is given as the East Midlands, and no individual station is named.

Four operational buildings, one heating system each, and a contract classified as a supply. The stations do not stop running while the boilers come out.

How it was bought

The trust did not run a standalone tender. The notice records that a further competition was undertaken on its behalf by the framework operator Pagabo under the Mechanical and Electrical Solutions Framework, lot 3a, East Midlands area, under project reference AVP-CNTW-001. Following an expression of interest, the tender was issued on 22 May through the framework portal and ran for thirty days.

Two tenders were received, both from small or medium sized enterprises. The award was made on the basis of fifty per cent commercial and fifty per cent quality, and the notice sets out those two criteria at a weighting of fifty each and nothing else. The procedure is recorded as restricted, and the procurement is recorded as not covered by the Government Procurement Agreement. The trust reference for the requirement is C460101 and the notice cites a previous publication dated 2023.

Heb Group Ltd is recorded at Unit 16, President Buildings, Savile Street East, Sheffield, with registration number 12161147, and is recorded as not being a small or medium sized enterprise. The initial estimated total value and the total value of the contract are each given as 170,000 pounds excluding value added tax, so the award landed on its estimate.

What 170,000 pounds across four sites means

The figure works out at an average of 42,500 pounds a station, and that is the number worth holding onto. It has to cover removal of an existing gas installation, the external plant, the electrical supply to it, alterations to the internal distribution, and commissioning, on four separate buildings.

Nothing on the notice discloses the size of any of the four heating installations, so the average tells a bidder about the scale of the intervention rather than about the buildings. What it does indicate is that these are replacements at building services scale, not a plant room rebuild. Where an existing wet system can be reused, the cost sits in the external unit, the electrical capacity and the controls. Where it cannot, the balance moves quickly, and that is the risk a fixed price on four unseen buildings carries.

What the notice leaves out

There is no programme on the notice: no start date, no completion date and no duration, so how the four sites are sequenced is not on the record. There is no site list, no split of the value between the four, and no option for further stations. There is no statement of who holds the design, which matters on a contract classified as supplies but delivered as building services work, and no reference to any electrical supply upgrade, which is usually the item that determines whether an air source installation at an operational site is straightforward or not.

The review body given on the notice is the High Court and Court of Appeal of England and Wales, which is also named as the body responsible for mediation procedures.