Mossbourne began with a simple idea: Hackney children are as bright as children anywhere. What they require is an environment where learning is the norm. The federation is unapologetic about having high standards and high expectations, they never stand still and are always improving.  After a merger with the Ortu trust in 2024 they grew to 7 schools and they are one of the highest-achieving Multi Academy Trusts in the country.

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

Mossbourne Federation was growing and reached out to RIVA via recommendation. Their new procurement requirements focussed on the efficient consolidation of their important support services – catering and cleaning and they required our expertise at a sensitive time of merger with the Ortu trust.

These were complex procurements as this was a time of great change for the federation and the new academies themselves, the schools were geographically spread and each school had it’s own specific requirements for each service, plus the starting point was a mixture of different contractors at different school, with some currently running their services in house.

The key drivers of the procurement were to:

• Consolidate each support service under one supplier
• Achieve economies of scale and cost reduction
• Achieve consistency of high standards across the federation
• Achieve consistency, transparency and economies via consolidated management

Key stakeholders were quickly identified and both federation wide and specific objectives per school were developed, and clearly laid out. This is a fine art as consistency for the federation was key, but to achieve a successful outcome for each individual school, their specific requirements also needed to be worked into the specification.

These were two very popular procurements with the market as the scope for improvement was made clear as were the specific outcomes we were driving towards. This made for clear, concise and transformational projects.

The outcome

The federation were delighted with the results of both their catering and cleaning tenders.

Cost savings were realised, each school was delighted with a bespoke bid addressing their particular needs and requirements and the federation now have two consolidated contracts that are much easier to manage internally.

The Federation retained RIVA in a contract management capacity, keen to ensure all of the ‘promises made’ by the winning bidders, were delivered and to support their newly structured internal resource.

The initial contract management meetings ensured all key elements of the bid were captured and the year ahead was planned out, for both catering and cleaning services. Set agendas and KPI’s were integral to ensuring both robust, organised management meetings and a clear, transparent view of the service deliveries at all times

The outcome

The commencement of any new contract is always a challenging time and RIVA were at hand for the trust to reach out to, with any queries, confirmations and support needs as mobilisation rolled out.

We have achieved a position of smooth services, clear communications and high performing services, the trust are delighted!