Tender

Swansea tenders boundary and path upgrades in two housing lots

By Staff Writer  |  24 August 2026

The City and County of Swansea has gone to tender for external works to council housing at West Cross, with a total estimated value of 1,279,700.73 pounds excluding value added tax split across two lots. The notice was published on 24 August 2026 at 11:13am under the identifier 2026/S 000-080242 and carries the reference CCS/26/170.

The description records what the works cover. They include the upgrading of boundary and party wall fencing, gates, clothes lines, paths and hedges in accordance with the Welsh Housing Quality Standard. Two lots are available. Lot 1 is 69 houses. Lot 2 is 27 houses and 10 blocks of flats. Tenderers may submit for one or both lots, but no tenderer will be awarded more than one, and as part of the pre-qualification stage each must identify a preferred lot in the event that it is ranked successful for both.

Lot 1 carries an estimated value of 830,682.93 pounds excluding value added tax and 996,819.52 pounds including it, with contract dates running from 19 October 2026 to 31 March 2027. Lot 2 carries an estimated value of 449,017.80 pounds excluding value added tax and 538,821.36 pounds including it, with contract dates running from 19 October 2026 to 25 January 2027. Both figures together give the published total of 1,279,700.73 pounds excluding value added tax. The procurement is recorded as below the relevant threshold, the procedure is below threshold open competition, and the devolved regulations that apply are recorded as Wales.

The award criteria name a compensation event assessment

The award criteria are unusually informative for a package of this size. Price carries 70 per cent, and the notice records two components under it: a pricing schedule and a compensation event assessment. The quality criteria are then broken down, with the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 at 8 per cent, project specifics at 7 per cent, technical capability at 6 per cent, stakeholder engagement at 5 per cent and supply chain and subcontractor management at 4 per cent.

Two things follow for a bidder. First, part of the price score is earned on how a tenderer proposes to assess a compensation event, not merely on the rates in the pricing schedule. That places the mechanism for valuing change inside the tender evaluation rather than leaving it to be argued about after the event. The notice does not name the form of contract, and nothing here supplies one, but a tenderer should establish which valuation rules the assessment is to be made under before pricing that submission.

Second, the highest single quality weighting is given to the CDM Regulations 2015. On external works to occupied homes that is a defensible allocation: the works are dispersed across 96 properties and ten blocks, with residents present, gardens in use and the public passing. The notice does not identify the principal designer or the principal contractor role, and it does not say whether the properties are occupied throughout, although works to boundary fencing, clothes lines and paths in a live housing area make that the likely working assumption for anyone pricing it.

Site visits and the tender timetable

The notice records that during the tender period a broadcast through the Welsh electronic tendering portal will confirm two available dates and times when contractors can visit the site with the project management team. On those visits contractors will have the opportunity to see some previously completed properties as well as properties due to be undertaken. That is a phase two package, and the ability to see phase one work already done is worth more to a bidder than any wording in the specification.

The enquiry deadline is 14 September 2026 at 12:00pm and the tender submission deadline is 21 September 2026 at 12:00pm, leaving seven days between them. Both lots are recorded as particularly suitable for small and medium sized enterprises and for voluntary, community and social enterprises. The classifications on the notice cover fences, landscaping work, landscaping work for gardens, surface work for footpaths, foundation work for footpaths and construction work, and the contract location is recorded as Swansea.

What the notice does not publish is the schedule of properties, the condition of the existing boundaries, or how access to individual gardens is to be obtained and programmed. On a dispersed external works contract, access is the single largest programme risk: a contractor cannot force entry to a tenant's garden and cannot always work in the order that suits the sequence. The notice sets a rule against awarding both lots to one tenderer, which spreads that risk across two contractors, but it leaves the access arrangements to the tender documents.