The Hampshire, Isle of Wight, Southampton and Portsmouth Trust (HISP) was originally founded in 2020 and since that time we has expanded to include eight schools across the South of England and the Isle of Wight, including 6 secondary and 2 primary schools.

The services we successfully provided to them under our Procurement Partnership were:

HISP initially reached out to RIVA to engage with them in a contract management capacity. The trust needed our support and expertise as they were experiencing challenges with both services, in particular:

Catering: The uptake at the primary schools within the trust was low

RIVA’s structured contract management included regular chaired, agenda driven meetings whereby the contractors were held to account for their performance and tasked with a focus on primary uptake. Investigative work into demographics, non users, key stage uptake split, parental views and working in tandem with the school commenced, was planned out over the coming months and progress was monitored rigorously at our contract management meetings.

Cleaning: Lack of transparency over hours delivery and inconsistent service standards delivery across the schools

RIVA introduced our comprehensive hours and standards tracking system via our contract management service and transparency was achieved instantly. This meant that areas of concern regarding under delivered hours and underperforming standards where they arose, were then easily identifiable each month for each school within the Trust.

The standards delivery issue was focussed on one school in particular. RIVA were able to confirm what ‘is and isn’t acceptable’ with regards to management and contract standards outcomes and it was agreed this school needed urgent attention. RIVA escalated the issue directly to the Managing Director of the incumbent cleaning company, whi became involved immediately.

A comprehensice improvement plan was requested to include specific tasks, responsibility centres and dates for completion. This was tracked both internally and at our contract managemnt meetings.

The outcome

Catering: We are delighted to report that the primary schools now have a new focus and a new menu that so far, has seen many more pupils engage with the catering services and sales are up!

Cleaning: The trust were very pleased when at year end, our contract monitoring system secured credit notes for them for under delivered hours of circa £7,000

The standards issues have been addressed and the school in question has absolute clarity as to the plans and steps that are being taken to correct the issues. The Managing Director for the incumbent remains custodian of the account bringing further assurance as to the school.

As RIVA were engaged with the trust and knew their catering services inside out – it was natural for the trust to reach out to us for support as their trust grew by 2 new schools, where they required these schools to join their current trust wide catering contract.

This was a sensitive project as we wanted to avoid the new schools feeling like a new service provider had simply been assigned to them.

So – we took a robust and inclusive approach. The project was run as a ‘mini tender with one bidder’ (the trust wide incumbent).

Current sales and TUPE data was gathered and the level of detail capturing each school’s specific catering parameters and requirements was captured.

The incumbent provider was tasked with providing both financial and operational proposals for the two schools, the detailed school and service data was released plus site visits to the new school were arranged to ‘bring the requirements to life’ for the bidding incumbent. RIVA were also at hand at all times to field questions from the incumbent to ensure the most bespoke ‘bid’ possible.

The project concluded with a presentation of the proposals by the trust’s incumbent caterer to the new schools. This ensured the offers were completely understood and agreed, setting the scene for a great working relationship moving forwards.

The outcome

When the financial and operational proposals were received RIVA engaged in a rigorous round of ‘challenges’ with the incumbent, which concluded with a financial and operational offer that both schools were happy with.

The schools felt included in the process and comfortable that their specific catering requirements had been understood and would be delivered.

We are delighted to see a positive out come here with no disruption to the current catering contract and a great realtionship in place between the schools and their new catering provider.